An Old Woman ('The Ugly Duchess')
- Artist: Quinten Massys
- Date: about 1513
- Medium: oil on wood
- Museum: The National Gallery
- Collection record: The National Gallery website
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About this artwork
An Old Woman ('The Ugly Duchess') painted in the North by Quinten Massys is a striking work from about 1513. This painting captures the emergence of the grotesque as a subject for art, and Massys pioneered this type of secular, satirical imagery.
The old woman depicted here challenges every traditional canon of beauty. Her lively eyes are set deep in their sockets, her skin is pimply, and she's lost all her teeth. Yet, despite her age, she's elegantly dressed in a low-cut bodice that was considered scandalous by the time this painting was made.
Her headdress, with its horns, is an iconographic shorthand for female vanity. The old woman brazenly challenges every traditional canon of beauty and rule of propriety, but at the same time, she's trying to seduce the old man, offering him a rosebud - a flower with sexual connotations.
This painting is part of a pair, with its 'other half', An Old Man, in a private collection in New York. The old woman breaks conventions by appearing on the proper right side, reserved for men in double portraits. She invites viewers to mock the foolishness of the old who behave as if they are still young.
Massys' work shows his interest in the expressive power of the human face, similar to that of Leonardo da Vinci's studies of grotesque heads. The painting is an original, not a copy, and technical analysis confirms its attribution to Massys himself.
See it in person
An Old Woman ('The Ugly Duchess') hangs in The National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
