The Ugly Duchess: Anti-Renaissance Art?

The Ugly Duchess: Anti-Renaissance Art?

By Liam Otero

Published: April 10, 2023

When one encounters the term "Renaissance", the mind conjures a series of images: glorifications of the learned cultures of Ancient Greece and Rome as epitomized in Raphael's The School of Athens (1509 - 1511); aesthetic appreciation of the human body in Leonardo da Vinci's mathematically proportioned The Vitruvian Man (c. 1487 - 1490); or, sweeping, emotionally-resonant retellings of Biblical narratives across Michelangelo's epic Sistine Chapel Ceiling paintings (1508 - 1512). Above all, one may initially think of an Italian Renaissance artist before a Northern Renaissance artist from today's Germany, France, Belgium or the Netherlands.?

However, one would be remiss to label these Northern cultures as the direct opposites of Italy. There has been as much prevalence of morally-steeped, religious artworks that promote Christian messages alongside secular works that comment on contemporaneous social behaviors (look to the works of Rogier van der Weyden, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, or Hieronymus Bosch, to name a few). In furtherance of humanism, Albrecht Dürer conducted countless studies on human anatomy through both his artistry and writing, particularly noteworthy in his Four Books on Human Proportions (1532 - 1534).?

Northern Renaissance artists diverged in style and subject as noted in their pursuit of grander decorative effects and tremendous output of genre scenes (artworks that depict scenes of everyday life). There is a more frequent occurrence of naturalistic bodily features such as the rounded, squat cavorting figures in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Wedding Dance (1566). Although this is a simple rundown of the distinct content and stylistic attributes of Northern Renaissance art in comparison to their Southern counterparts, there is a single painting that challenges our understanding of what defines Renaissance art in a broad sense: Flemish painter Quentin Matsys's An Old Woman (or, more commonly known as The Ugly Duchess, c. 1513).?

The Ugly Duchess is a 62.4 x 45.5 cm three-quarter view, bust-length portrait of an older woman. The unidentified sitter's facial features exhibit noticeably prominent distortions: deep wrinkles, flared nostrils, elongated lips, misshapen head, loosened skin, and jutting ears. Large, rounded breasts protrude over the top of her brocade. The duchess's clothing reflects the fashion and accoutrements associated with nobility as seen in the horned headdress designed with elegantly embroidered floral shapes and grid-patterned linework, finely stitched white veil and blue brocade, and golden rings she wears on each hand. Placed in an indeterminate setting that comprises a light green space, the woman directs her gaze upward while her left-hand rests on an illusory ledge in the foreground, and her right-hand holds a small, red flower (common symbol of marriage or courtship).?

Matsys's portrait is a remarkable departure from the imagery we expect to encounter in Northern and Southern Renaissance art. Though she may be unidealized in the Northern sense, this is an atypical way of representing a figure who belonged to the aristocratic class. Such a starkly unidealized appearance would be reserved for genre paintings, although not necessarily to the degree of physical deformity. There is also no discernible signifier of its relationship with the era's religious or humanist beliefs. In short, why would such an image be created? Is it truly a Renaissance artwork, or does it go beyond the Art History canon??

Art historians have divided opinions as to the precise meaning behind the work and the motivation for its creation. A longstanding belief has persisted that the portrait operates as a social satire on vanity, attractiveness, and materialism. One possible reading of the work is that the duchess hopelessly seeks a lover (one assumes younger), as indicated by her clutching the red flower while longingly looking off in the distance. Although her clothing is expensive, it pokes fun at her manner of dress which was considered nearly a century out-of-style upon the painting's completion.?

Contextually, there is ample evidence to support this argument as a number of Northern Renaissance artworks were infused with moral messages and social criticisms expressed via humorous and, at times, outrageous narratives (Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights and Ship of Fools). Historically, too, The Ugly Duchess was completed just a few years after the publication of Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus's influential essay In Praise of Folly (1509), which satirizes human foibles and includes passages that lambast the futility of older, wealthy women seeking romance: "And what is yet more comical, you shall have some wrinkled old women, whose very looks are a sufficient antidote to lechery … they shall paint and daub their faces, always stand a tricking up themselves at their looking-glass … write love-letters, and do all the other little knacks of decoying hot-blooded suitors; and in the meanwhile, however they are laughed at".

While these art historical and literary examples seem plausible, there has been increasing validity to a more scientific analysis. Michael Baum, Professor Emeritus of Surgery at University College London, published an article in the British Medical Journal in 1989 in which he wrote about the historical presence of Paget's disease. In this physiological disorder, an individual’s bones shift and become deformed in one or more areas. Although Sir James Paget first identified the disease in 1877, Baum utilizes Matsys's The Ugly Duchess to argue that the disease has been around since at least the early-16th Century. Paget's disease was associated with the lower body and is usually diagnosed in older individuals, but the disfigurement of the titular subject's face in The Ugly Duchess points to the likelihood that she suffered from a rare form.?

The duchess's heightened features are unusual and unique to Northern Renaissance art, yet Dutch and Flemish portraiture conventions were more prone to depict naturalistic details from their subjects such as wrinkles and aging in Hans Memling's Portrait of an Old Man (c. 1475) or overweightness in Frans Floris's The Falconer's Wife (1558). In the case of The Ugly Duchess, a rare bone disease would be no exception to this pictorial trend in Northern European art.?

The Ugly Duchess is visually a far cry from even the most unidealized of Northern Renaissance paintings, yet it still qualifies as Renaissance art. Humanism stipulated a collective appreciation of the human body, albeit Italian artists were wont to devote more attention to Greco-Roman inspired athleticism, musculature, and proportionality. Northern artists demonstrate a broader examination of the diversity of body types that exist in the world across social classes, occupations, genders, and ages: tall and short, young and old, thin and fat, fashionable and dull, etc. So, one must acknowledge that the duchess's graphic appearance conveys a truthfulness and sincerity to her form given the careful handling of her face and extensive details afforded to her lavish clothing - regardless of their out-of-date status. Is she really that different from the youthfulness of Lucas Cranach the Elder's Lucretia (1530) or the wrinkled, warty skin of Dürer’s Portrait of a Man Against a Green Background??

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