The flamboyant Material girl has turned Earth mother, and Vanity Fair has the pictures to prove it, reports Lydia Slater.

A pretty, some what dishevelled woman sits with a nappy-clad child on her knee, both gazing unselfconciously to camera. it is a charming picture, but an unexpected one; those who have followed Madonna through her myriad borrowed identities, would never, surely, have expected such a radical overhaul as this.

For her latest photo shoot, the 39 year old multi-millionairess who once did an entire world tour in conical bra, corset and suspenders, teams a sensible over the knee beige skirt with a sleeveless lavender T-shirt. This reveals arms that are a little more defined than the average mothers, but certainly not as muscular as they were in her eighties heydey, when she quested obsessively for the body beautiful.

After the birth of Lourdes - whom she calls Lola - she seemed in no hurry to regain her svelte outline. And now that she has shed the extra punds - with the help of daily Yoga lessons rather than the punishing workouts of her touring days - she is deliberatly allowed her image to soften at the edges.

Her hair is no longer an immacualte helmet of Hollywood platinum, nor an artful tangle of siren locks, but a dark, hastily assembled "Mom" ponytail that flops over her forehead. her face is only lightly made-up, her expression is gentle and a little worn.

the hand that holds 15-month-old Lourdes with comfortable confidence on her lap is bare of rings, and the nails are unvarnished. "Ever since my daughter was born I feel the fleetingness of time," she said last year. "And I don't want to waste it on getting the perfect lip colour."

Given madonna's fondness for manipulating her own image, it would not be undult cynical to speculate whether Madonna and child is merely a flirtation with a different look, several steps on from Material Girl but not inherently different or more meaningful.

But this change does seem to be more skin deep. The woman who throughout her career has set out to shock, sometimes pretty crudely, now wants to be seen as the most traditional of mothers.

Since Loudes birth in October 199, Madonna has determinedly deglossed her way of life, exchanging Castillo del lago, a huge, nine-level house over looking Lake Hollywood, for a simple single storey pad in the far less fashionable area of Los Feliz. "It wasn't a good house for having a child in," was her explanation. "Too many staircases."

Although she is rumoured to have the usual celebrity retinue to look after Lourdes (two nannies, a nurse and a dietician, apparently), she seems determined to keep her baby by her side as much as possible. Thus, Lourdes has become a regular fixture at her mother's photo sessions; she even accompanied her to the studio when Madonna was making her new album Ray of Light.

"Lourdes really is the love of my life. I don't want to traipse around with nannies and tutors. I think it's important for children to stay in one place, to socialise with other children," Madonna said. "I'm not going to say I don't want to go on tour or make movies anymore, but I realise I'm going to have to make a lot of compromises."

Madonna holds strong views on child rearing: Lourdes will not be allowed to watch television - "TV's poison" - and will be brought up a Catholic. However, this tradition does not extend to her own arrangements.

As she admits in the Vanity Fair interview that accompanies this exclusive picture, she and Lourdes's father, Carlos Leon, a fitness trianer, are no longer together. "He is ever present in Lola's life and we are friends," is all she will say. Others, however, claim she has brought off Leon, agreeing only to twice-monthly visiting rights, on condition that he never seeks sole custody of Lourdes. Leon himslef is not available for comment.

According to Madonna, "People are extremely judgemental of me and my choice to have a child and not be married, as if I were the first person to do it. I know lots of married people who have terribly unhealthy relationships; marriage isn't a guarentee of anything.

I don't think it's my obligation to explain my relationship to people. The most important thing is to have love. That happens with a marriage, without a marriage, with a single parent, whatever."

Nevertheless, she is not comitted to single parent hood. "I would love to have another child, but I'd like to be in a stable relationship," she told Vanity Fair. "Sometimes you want to look over at somebody and say: 'What do you think we should do?'"