New art exhibition challenges gender of 16th-century Massys painting ‘An Old Woman’

An artwork historian has offered an choice looking through of one particular of the Nationwide Gallery’s most memorable portraits.

An Outdated Woman by Flemish painter Quinten Massys has hung at the Gallery for far more than 80 years, and is recognized for its strange depiction of an aged girl with arresting capabilities.

The 1530 portray demonstrates an aristocratic woman whose appears to be deviate from popular natural beauty specifications.

As explained by the Countrywide Gallery, her attributes contain “lively eyes established deep in their sockets, a snub nose, huge nostrils, pimply skin, a hairy mole, bulging forehead and a outstanding square chin”.

The portrait influenced Sir John Tenniel’s illustration of the Duchess in Lewis Carroll’s children’s book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Though Massys’ painting has prolonged been speculated as a depiction of a girl with Paget’s disease, a condition that triggers bone hypertrophy, Emma Capron, an specialist in Renaissance artwork, has now claimed that the determine was probable to be a person dressed as a female, in preserving with the artist’s exploration of gender.

“Yes, she is most very likely a he,” Capron instructed The Observer.

“A cross-dresser as a enjoy on gender. We know that Massys was quite interested in carnivals, where guys would impersonate women of all ages.”

Just one of the defining characteristics of the painting topic contains significant, wrinkly décolletage. In accordance to Capron, this is a signature element for Massys.

“The breasts, with their brazen and scandalous cleavage, are a Massys fantasy.”

An Old Girl is one particular of a pair of paintings. Its companion piece is An Previous Male, which, till lately been in a personal selection in New York.

Each pieces will be exhibited together in a new exhibition curated by Capron called The Unsightly Duchess: Elegance and Satire in the Renaissance, which opens at the Nationwide Gallery on Thursday 16 March.

The exhibition will also assert that a drawing identified as A Grotesque Outdated Woman, attributed to Francesco Melzi, who was Leonardo da Vinci’s main assistant, encouraged Massys’ An Old Girl.

An Outdated Lady is also once in a while known as The Unattractive Duchess, after it was misattributed as a portrait of Margaret Maultasch, Duchess of Carinthia and Countess of Tyrol, who lived in the 14th century.