Curator of Renaissance art exhibition claims grotesque sitter for portrait didn’t have a disfiguring disease, as was previously thought
Wrinkled, furrowed, jowly and far from attractive, An Old Woman, by the Flemish artist Quinten Massys, is one of the standout paintings in London’s National Gallery. It is usually called “The Ugly Duchess”, after it became the inspiration for Sir John Tenniel’s drawing of the infamous duchess in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Now, five centuries since Massys completed his painting and 150 years after Tenniel’s interpretation, the portrait has been reassessed as neither an old woman nor a duchess, but actually as a male transvestite.
