The Ugly Duchess is a satirical portrait painted by the Flemish artist Quentin Matsys

Quentin Matsys

Quentin Matsys was a painter in the Flemish tradition and a founder of the Antwerp school. He was born at Leuven, where legend states he was trained as an ironsmith before becoming a painter...

 around 1513. It shows a grotesque old woman with wrinkled skin and withered breasts (partially visible from her low-cut dress). She wears the aristocratic horned headdress of her youth, by then out of fashion, and holds a red flower in her right hand, at the time a symbol of engagement, indicating that she is trying to attract a suitor. However, it has been described as a bud that will 'likely never blossom'. The work is Matsys' best-known painting.

Secular and moralising, The Ugly Duchess is likely drawn from two sources. It bears striking resemblance to two caricature head drawings commonly attributed to Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

. The caricatures were originally believed to be based on an earlier lost work by Leonardo, but are now believed to be based on the painting of Matsys, who is known to have exchanged drawings with Leonardo. The second source is Erasmus's

Desiderius Erasmus

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus , known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and a theologian....

 In Praise of Folly, which satirises women who "still play the coquette", "cannot tear themselves away from their mirrors" and "do not hesitate to exhibit their repulsive withered breasts". The woman is often identified as Margaret, Countess of Tyrol, claimed by her enemies to be ugly; however, she had died 150 years before the painting was made. In 2008 it was claimed that the sitter was suffering from a rare form of Paget's disease

Paget's disease of bone

Paget's disease is a chronic disorder that can result in enlarged and misshapen bones. The excessive breakdown and formation of bone tissue causes affected bone to weaken, resulting in pain, misshapen bones, fractures, and arthritis in the joints near the affected bones...

, in which the victim's bones enlarge and become deformed.

It hangs in the National Gallery

National gallery

The National Gallery is an art gallery on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom.National Gallery may also refer to:*Armenia: National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan*Australia:**National Gallery of Australia, Canberra...

 in London, to whom it was bequeathed by Miss Jenny Louisa Roberta Blaker in 1947. It was originally half of a diptych

Diptych

A diptych di "two" + ptychē "fold") is any object with two flat plates attached at a hinge. Devices of this form were quite popular in the ancient world, wax tablets being coated with wax on inner faces, for recording notes and for measuring time and direction.In Late Antiquity, ivory diptychs with...

, with a Portrait of an Old Man, in the Musée Jacquemart-André

Musée Jacquemart-André

The Musée Jacquemart-André is a public museum located at 158 Boulevard Haussmann in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. The museum was created from the private home of Édouard André and Nélie Jacquemart to display the art they collected during their lives.-History:Edouard André, the scion of a...

, Paris, which was lent to the gallery in 2008 for a temporary exhibition. The two paintings were hung side-by-side.

The portrait is considered to be the inspiration for John Tenniel

John Tenniel

Sir John Tenniel was a British illustrator, graphic humorist and political cartoonist whose work was prominent during the second half of England’s 19th century. Tenniel is considered important to the study of that period’s social, literary, and art histories...

's 1869 illustrations of the Duchess

Duchess (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)

The Duchess is a character in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published in 1865. Carroll does not describe her physically in much detail, although her hideous appearance is strongly established in the popular imagination thanks to John Tenniel's illustrations and from context it...

 in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...

.

Gallery

External links

• "An Old Woman ('The Ugly Duchess')" National Gallery