The 1513 portrait “An Old Woman” by Flemish artist Quinten Massys would possibly effectively be one of many Renaissance’s most well-known work. It can be one of many interval’s most atypical.
With wrinkled pores and skin, withered breasts, and eyes set deep of their sockets, Massys’ topic — believed to be both a fictional folkloric character or a lady affected by an exceptionally uncommon type of Paget’s illness — is visibly aged. But she’s not simply previous; she’s grotesque. Her brow is bulging, her nostril snub and vast, her squared chin overly distinguished. Even her apparel is a far cry from what you’d anticipate a Renaissance woman her age to put on. Rather than modest, sober garments, she’s donning a revealing low-cut costume displaying off her décolleté (and people dimpled breasts).
She shares not one of the idealized qualities seen in different feminine figures of that period, like Sandro Botticelli’s Venus or Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
Yet, regardless of her look, the portrait — extra sometimes called “The Ugly Duchess” — is so fascinating that it made the previous lady one of the unforgettable figures of her time. Now, a brand new exhibition at London’s National Gallery titled “The Ugly Duchess: Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance” is ready to shed new mild on her arresting appears to be like.
For it, Massys’ portray will probably be showcased alongside its companion piece, “An Old Man,” on mortgage from a personal assortment, in addition to with different works by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer and Jan Gossaert, that includes equally expressive older girls, to discover how the feminine physique, age and sure facial options have been satirized and demonized through the Renaissance.
Massys’ “An Old Woman” is displayed alongside “An Old Man” as a part of the National Gallery exhibit in London.
“The ‘Ugly Duchess’ is one of the most beloved and divisive pieces in the National Gallery,” the present’s curator Emma Capron mentioned in a cellphone interview forward of the present’s opening. “Some people love it, some people hate it, some people cannot look at it. I wanted to interrogate that, while also examining how this and similar images of ‘transgressing’ women — aging women outside the classic standards of beauty — have actually served to mock societal norms and upset social order. Despite what you might think at first glance, these are powerful, ambivalent, even joyful figures.”
Subverting conventions
For a very long time, critics interpreted Massys’ portray primarily as a misogynistic satire of feminine self-importance and self-delusion. Similarly, her scandalous look subsequent to that of the person — probably her husband — who’s decidedly extra formally dressed than her (even a tad boring), has lengthy been thought-about as a parody of marriage (she’s seen providing him a rosebud as a token of affection, however he has a hand raised as if to point contempt).
This bust of an previous lady made in Italy by an unknown artist illustrates the carnivalesque nature assigned to girls of a sure age. Credit: Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
But, Capron mentioned, the portray is definitely much more layered than that. “This is an older, ugly woman questioning the canons of beauty normativity,” she defined. “With her exaggerated features, she symbolizes someone who’s not apologetic about herself and what she’s wearing, and who is not trying to hide or be invisible. l
“On the opposite, she’s trampling the foundations of propriety and the best way girls of a sure age are speculated to behave. Her defiance and irreverence appear fully of our instances — and are what has made her image so enduring.”
Her position in relation to her partner also signals she’s not just the butt of the joke. The duchess is in fact standing on the right — the beholder’s left — which in double portraits of that period was the most elevated side, and usually reserved to men. Essentially, she’s taking the place of her male counterpart. “It’s like she’s turning the world the wrong way up, and bringing change forth,” Capron said.
Massys, she added, was likely very aware of the reactions his over-the-top character would stir. While ridiculing the old woman was certainly part of his concept for the piece, the painter also used the work to make fun of classic art principles, blend high and low culture — the dignified genre of portraiture with the carnivalesque figure — and propel the grotesque into the mainstream.
Many of his contemporaries shared similar ambitions. Two related drawings of the same memorable face attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and his leading assistant Francesco Melzi, which are also on display in the exhibition, point to the possibility that the Flemish painter based his painting on the compositions by the Italian master, who was just as fascinated with the subversive potential that subjects like older women might hold.
“The bust of a grotesque previous lady. ” Attributed to Francesco Melzi, Leonardo da Vinci’s leading assistant, who historians believe created a copy from Leornardo’s original work. (1510-20). Credit: The Royal Collection/HM King Charles III
By the same token, the other pieces in the show—- from the scowling maiolica (a type of Italian tin-glazed earthenware) “Bust of an Old Woman” (about 1490-1510), lent by the Fitzwilliam Museum, to the menacing-looking “Witch Riding Backward on a Goat” by Albrecht Dürer (1498-1500) — also reveal how, for many Renaissance artists, “older girls provided an area to experiment and play that the depiction of standard magnificence and normative our bodies merely could not permit,” Capron said.
Older women in art
Elderly women haven’t just served satirical art. From ancient Roman sculptures to contemporary artworks, aging female figures have in fact appeared under a number of different guises from artists around the world.
“Across visible traditions and genres, older girls have all the time made particularly compelling topics,” art historian Frima Fox Hofrichter — who co-edited an entire anthology on the topic titled “Women, Aging and Art” — said in a phone interview. “With their wrinkles and sagging breasts, furrowed brows and comely our bodies, they’ve taken on a variety of extensively numerous, typically nuanced meanings that go effectively past the caricature.”
Old women have been used as reminders of death and the unstoppable march of time, from Hans Baldung Grien’s 1541 “The Ages of Woman and Death” to Francisco Goya’s unsettling “Time and the Old Women,” painted in 1810.
“Time and the Old Women,” by Francisco de Goya. Credit: Leemage/Corbis/Getty Images
They’ve been rendered with empathy and compassion to reflect wisdom, softness, and dignity, as seen in Rembrandt’s paintings of old women from the early to mid-1600s such as “An Old Woman Praying” (1629), in which the artist’s used light and shadow to create a sense of depth and emotional intensity that emphasize the woman’s (likely his mother) spiritual devotion and his respect for her faith; or “An Old Woman Reading” (1655), where the lived-in face of the elderly figure shows a tender, gentle expression that exudes warmth and care.
Often — in step with age-old attitudes about gender — they’ve come to embody sin and malevolence, as shown in the wealth of European witch iconography from the modern era, from Jacques de Gheyn’s “Witches’ Sabbath”, dated around the 16th-early 17th century to “Macbeth’, Act I, Scene 3, the Weird Sisters” by Henry Fuseli, circa 1783.
“In all their varied types, they have been the other of invisible,” Fox Hofrichter said. “Whether via stereotypical depictions or optimistic associations, aged girls in artwork have made us look, assume, and proven us one thing new. There’s numerous energy in that.”
Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, as more female artists have entered the field, the representation of older women has changed afresh. Their bodies, in particular, have come to the forefront in unflinching, even confronting new ways, and — crucially — seen through a woman’s lens.
American painter Joan Semmel’s large-scale nude self-portraits are perhaps the best example of that, documenting her own body as it’s aged over the decades. Semmel, now 90, began the project in the 1980s as a way to depict herself in a way that felt truthful to her, without idealizing or concealing the natural effects of aging, from drooping breasts to sagging skin. The resulting works couldn’t be further from the notion of traditional female portraiture that puts youth and perfection above all. Instead, they show the audience a woman coming to terms with her own aging flesh.
Diane Edison, “Diane at 70,” (2021). Pastel on paper 44 x 30 inches
Credit: Diane Edison/George Adams Gallery
African American artist Diane Edison, too, hasn’t shied away from exploring her private historical past via uncompromising self-portraits that highlight her weathered face and physique, balancing vulnerability and defiance without delay.
Recasting previous age has additionally been accomplished by the use of fantasy worlds. In the collection “My Grandmothers” (2000) Japanese photographer Miwa Yanagi requested a bunch of younger girls (and a few males) to think about themselves in 50 years’ time, to problem constructs about previous age and their perceived notions of what “elderly” would possibly seem like.
By specializing in the wrinkles, strains, and different bodily options that include age, these artists have highlighted the methods during which getting older can form and outline an individual, difficult the notion that youth is the one time value celebrating, and previous age one thing to be feared or averted.
Miwa Yanagi
Sachiko from the collection My grandmothers 2000
sort C {photograph} + textual content
{photograph}: 86.7 x 120 cm picture/sheet;
textual content: 21.6 x 30 cm sheet
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Purchased with funds supplied by Naomi Kaldor, Penelope Seidler, The Freedman Foundation, Peter and Thea Markus, Candice Bruce and Michael Whitworth, Geoff and Vicki Ainsworth, Stephen Ainsworth, Gary Langsford, Luca and Anita Belgiorno-Nettis, and the Photography Collection Benefactors’ Program 2002
© YANAGI Miwa
Photo: AGNSW
Credit: Miwa Yanagi
“When older women appear on canvas, film or sculpture, they expand our understanding of what it means to age.” Fox Hofrichter mentioned. “In a way, that makes them more challenging to capture, and, as a result, more challenging for the viewers to look at. Which is the essence of great art.”
Capron agrees. “Women are so often presented as either young and beautiful or old and invisible. But so many artworks have proved time and again that there are so many more gradients in between,” she mentioned. And the “The Ugly Duchess” is proof that even the caricature of an aged woman can include multitudes.
“The Ugly Duchess: Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance” runs March 16 – June 11 on the National Gallery in London.
Source: www.cnn.com