This book celebrates the reunion-- for the first time in twenty-four years and only the second time in their history--of two masterpieces of early Netherlandish painting commissioned by the Carthusian monk Jan Vos during his tenure as prior of the Charterhouse of Bruges in the 1440s: The Frick Collection's Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth, and Jan Vos, commissioned from Jan van Eyck and completed by his workshop; and the Gemaldegalerie's Virgin and Child with St. Barbara and Jan Vos, painted by Petrus Christus. These panels are examined with a selection of objects that place them for the first time in the rich Carthusian context for which they were created. Drawing on recent technical examination and new archival research, this volume explores the panels' creation, patronage, and function in their rich Carthusian context. The Carthusian order was one of the most austere strands of late medieval monasticism. In apparent contradiction to this asceticism, Carthusian monasteries became remarkable repositories of art, a material accumulation often attributed to lay patronage. However this explanation overlooks the ways in which the Carthusians themselves commissioned and used images for their daily devotions and liturgy, as well as their commemoration. The story of Jan Vos and his patronage of Jan van Eyck and Petrus Christus fundamentally informs our understanding of the role played by images in shaping monastic life and funerary strategies in late medieval Europe.

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