Quentin Matsys’ The Ugly Duchess

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO THE UGLY DUCHESS

Quentin Matsys’ The Ugly Duchess

The Ugly Duchess, also known as A Grotesque Old Woman, is considered Finnish artist Quentin Matsys’ best-known work.

Painted around 1513, The Ugly Duchess was originally half of a diptych that including The Portrait of an Old Man. The two pieces were reunited in 2008 and shown side by side in the 2008 exhibition of Renaissance Faces, at the National Gallery of London, the first time the two paintings had been re-united in 150 years.

The painting, an oil on oak panel, 62.4 X 45.5 cm, depicts a grotesque aristocratic woman wearing a horned headpiece and attire that would have been considered out of fashion – something that the subject of the painting would have worn in her youth. The red flower in her right hand was a symbol of engagement, indicating perhaps that she was attempting to attract a suitor.

One influence linked to the painting was Erasmus’ essay Praise of Folly, which satirized the vanity of older women attempting to “play the coquette”.

Michael Baum, emeritus professor of surgery at the University College London investigated the painting with his student Christopher Cook, publishing an article in the British Medical Journal in 1989 that concluded that the