Quinten Massys’ An Old Woman (‘The Ugly Duchess’) is one of the Renaissance’s most famous faces. In a fresh review of the iconic image, this book unveils the painting’s original context: its status as a pioneering work of satirical art, its debt to Leonardo da Vinci’s grotesque drawings, and what it tells us about the period’s complex attitudes towards women, age and normative beauty.  The painting and its partner, An Old Man, are parodic portraits that mock the supposed lust and vanity of older women. Yet a closer look also reveals a figure defiantly flouting conventions and a painter subverting artistic expectations.  The publication traces the eventful afterlife and enduring power of this seminal image: how she gained her nickname ‘The Ugly Duchess’ and inspired John Tenniel’s much-loved illustrations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), capturing the imagination of generations of readers.  Published by National Gallery Global/Distributed by Yale University Press  Exhibition Schedule: National Gallery, London, 16 March–11 June 2023

Hans Baldung Grien war einer der aussergewoehnlichsten deutschen Kunstler der Renaissance. In einer Epoche tiefgreifender Umwalzungen schuf er ein vielfaltiges und eigenstandiges Werk, das bis heute fasziniert. Der Katalog begleitete die Grosse Landesausstellung in der Staatlichen Kunsthalle Karlsruhe und umfasst rund 250 Exponate aus zahlreichen internationalen Sammlungen, darunter intime Andachtsbilder, leuchtende Glasgemalde, charaktervolle Portrats, humanistische Denkbilder und sinnliche Akte, zu denen auch die beruhmten Sundenfalldarstellungen und die drastischen Hexenszenen zahlen. Mit Einfuhrungen und Exponat-Texten, die sich an ein breiteres Publikum richten, sowie vielen Abbildungen bietet er einen einzigartigen UEberblick uber das Werk dieses grossen Malers, Zeichners und Druckgrafikers.

This exhibition, being held at the musee du Louvre in Paris, and its catalogue follow those dedicated to Florentine sculpture in the early Renaissance, 1400-1460, that took place in 2013-14 (Le Printemps de la Renaissance). The period scrutinised is 1460-1520 but the geographical coordinates are widened to include Northern Italy (Venice, Milan, Pavia, Padua, Bologna) and Rome as the artistic landscape of Italy becomes more complex. Some of the great sculptors, in fact, travelled and their style and their ideas influenced pre-existing local tradition. These new artistic languages share a common characteristic: the relationship to Greco-Roman Antiquity, especially in the representation of grace and passion: the expression of pathos and the theatrical quality of religious works, the symbolic richness of profane works and finally the development of a new and refined style which will find its highest expression in Roman classicism and in the work of Michelangelo. The catalogue includes the works of, among others, Donatello, Antonio Pollaiolo, Bertoldo di Giovanni, Giovanfrancesco Rustici, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Guido Mazzoni, Bartolomeo Bellano, Cristoforo Solari, Tullio Lombardo, Andrea Riccio, and Bambaia, Sansovino, and Michelangelo. Text in Italian.