Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent study morning from Paula Nuttall looking in depth at Quentin Massys’s “The Ugly Duchess”. The morning complemented the current exhibition at the National Gallery which had reunited the Duchess with her other half, “An Old Man”, and had examined the context of the work. Nuttall did this in more depth looking at the fashion for grotesque images both in Northern Europe and Italy and discussed how this knowledge may have passed between the two centres of Antwerp and Florence. She also looked at the traditions of Morris dancing which often featured a similar figure and discussed how that was probably played by a man at the time. I loved her delicate way of explaining the sexual innuendo involved.   We finished by looking at the history of the painting and how people gave tried to identify the Duchess as a real person and how she has seeped into the cultural zeitgeist.   

Lovely exhibition at the National Gallery focusing on Quinten Massys “Ugly Duchess” from about 1513. This well-known picture from the gallery’s collection was reunited with its pendant “Old Man” on loan from a private collection and set in the context of the time. I was pleased I had done an introductory talk on the show to get more depth, which I’ve already blogged, and I’ve also signed up to a longer course on it so I’ll save some of the nuisances for that. The show also included copies of a Leonardo drawing that the picture is based on and other examples of the satirical old man/young woman and visa-versa double portraits as well as a more formal, sympathetic one of an older couple. The idea of satirising older women in this period was explored with examples in print, majolica, painting and sculpture. I would have liked a bit more on the idea of a similar figure in festival entertainments which I had found fascinating in the talk. Closes 11 June 2023 Reviews Times G...

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their new exhibition focused on Quinten Massys’s “The Ugly Duchess” of about 1513. Emma Capron explained how the picture is more commonly called “An Old Woman” and was popularised as the model for John Tenniel’s original illustrations for the Duchess in “Alice in Wonderland”. However she then encouraged us to try to look at in the Renaissance context explaining the works in the exhibition which had been chosen to illustrate this.   She explained how it was based on a drawing by Leonardo which is only known in copies. It fits in his genre of drawing grotesque both from life and from his imagination and she talked about the role of these grotesque which were often used to imply moral laxity. She also talked about theories of comedy of the time and how this image might have reflected writings by Erasmus. One common moral and comedic trope was the idea of a couple mismatched in age. I was most interest in the secti...