The year 2005 marks the 75th anniversary of the American Academy of Pediatrics, founded in 1930. The early founders wanted an insignia to symbolize their work with children.  They turned to an Italian artist of the renaissance who designed some brightly colored terra cotta reliefs displayed on the exterior of the "Osperdale degli Innocenti" or Foundling Hospital on the Piazza della Annunziatia" in Florence, Italy. This is the oldest known institution devoted to the welfare of children. The artist was Andrea della Robbia. The reliefs are now known as the della robbia insignia.

The insignia depicts an infant tightly bound by swaddling clothes but with bare feet and extended upper extremities. The original showed the infant to be undernourished and sad. Former AAP President Henry Helmholz, MD wanted the figure changed. Helmholz engaged his cousin and artist Leo H. Junker to design a 'bambino' more suggestive of an American infant. The revised figure was submitted in 1941, but not adopted until 1955.

Andrea della Robbia was born in 1437 and died in 1528. He designed the originals in 1477 at the age of 60. The practice at the time was to swaddle infants for at least 3 months, including the feet. The artist however loosened the swaddling from what was actually practiced to depict the liberation from disease of the infant and an emancipation from health care practices based on ignorance.

This is a summary of an article that appeared in the November 2004, AAP News, p 244, in celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the AAP.