The Old Woman by Quentin Massys, 1530
Right then. An article about this painting popped up on suggested news for me one day with it being in a current exhibition and I was instantly interested mostly cuz the article suggested that the figure was not a cis woman but a ‘man in a dress’. So lets go investigate this then hens
The actual title is ‘The Old Woman’ but it is rarely called that due to its association with the illustrations in Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland of the Ugly Duchess.
This was painted around 1513 by Quentin Massys in oil on an oak panel, as opposed to a traditional canvas. The painting is a pair with ‘The Old Man’ who she is offering the rosebud to.
The Old Man by Quentin Massys, 1517
We’ll come back to the rosebud later.
Media and Mainstream (Cis) Interpretation
The article I first saw it mentioned in was The Guardian with the headline ‘She is a He’ and left me so confused cuz there was no real mention of why this was thought other than the writer of the article trying to say how manly she looks (she doesn’t but ok then i guess 🤷♀️). What I took away from the article is that ppl are more interested in suggesting its a satire of a trans person than of a disabled person with Paget’s Disease cuz…well its the fuckin guardian and we know how the UK press is towards trans ppl. Its also cuz of the overall view that the painting must be satire so no matter which way u slice it its not kind to one group or another
I did my usual brief google to do little fact checking and found nothing that really linked the painting with crossdressin or with being trans cuz all the information was being gatekept by the National Gallery and was in their exhibition catalogue/essay The Ugly Duchess: Beauty & Satire in the Renaissance. God forbid ppl have access to info freely instead of paying £14.95 🙄 Even the National Gallery’s website didn’t say anything to reflect this
Me being me i emailed the National Gallery to find out what the fuck has gone on there cuz i wasn’t convinced it was being interpreted quite how the media had spun it. As it happens the curator, Dr Emma Capron, hadn’t realised that the article had taken that and run so far with it as the theory that the figure of the ugly duchess being a crossdresser was smth that was barely mentioned as it only came up at the end of the research period so there was no solid evidence for her to feel like she could definitively say whether the figure was intersex, trans or a crossdresser.
Capron has said she made the focus of the exhibition, and the catalogue/essay, the beauty standards of women in the renaissance and today and how we see youth, beauty and ageing. She did apologise and assure me that she plans to secure funding to work with groups such as intersex and trans communities on how they might interpret the painting.
Fantastic response from Capron there. 10s across the board!
But lets not end it there. I wanna look at this from my perspective as a 5ft 3 transsexual from Leeds
My Interpretation of the icon herself
I’ve read the exhibition catalogue/essay and funnily enough it is nothing like the article suggests, who could have known!
The book suggests that the figure is not based on a specific person or even real, and that it is a fantasy allegory for how society in 1500s viewed older women, and Capron provides plenty of evidence to suggest that, but doesn’t really say why the figure isn’t real (which she is welcome to do cuz she is a curator at the National Gallery and i’m just a gobsite from the north exploring my feelings on a painting i haven’t even seen in the flesh…well…paint)
It does leave me to wonder if the reason the figure is seen as a myth or fantasy is just an underlying bias of not being able to place intersex and trans ppl in 1500s Antwerp.
SPOILERS: we were. We’ve always been around hen
It is suggested in the book that the figure could be based off a crossdressed figure from morris dancing who she affectionately refers to as ‘The Sausage Woman’ - SIDE NOTE: the phrase ‘The Sausage Woman’ appears A LOT while the word transvestite is mentioned once and i am here for it! She becomes known in the book as ‘The Sausage Woman’ due to the depictions of this figure waving sausages in the air, either on a stick or by hand.
Morris Dance by Daniel Hopfer, 15th Century
U couldn’t make this shit up its so daft it has to be real, and why would u want to make this shit up. We can see from the Hopfer engraving above that the costume for this role is very similar to the clothes worn by the figure in The Ugly Duchess. We could see this as a precursor to the British phenomenon of the pantomime dame, but we could also link this to a more ancient tradition.
In the Roman era there was an order of trans & intersex priestesses devoted to the goddess Cybele who, once a year, would run through the streets supposedly waving their severed and bloody penis to show their devotion to the goddess being willing to live as women from then on. Now this we should take with a pinch of salt cuz if u cut ur dick off and run thru the streets waving it ur probs gonna end up dead from blood loss pretty quickly, then who would be left to worship the goddess?
This could just as easily been symboling or just a show to get ppl to leave them the fuck alone cuz who is gonna mess with u if u run thru the streets waving ur severed dick in ur hands? No one thats who.
I don’t think its that far of a leap to go from roman trans women’s tradition to morris dancing with sausages, and it is really one of the least offensive things that has been done in morris dancing given it has included doing blackface
Does this mean that the figure isn’t real at all? No. It could be someone dressed in that outfit posing for Massys to paint that reference. The idea that ‘The breasts are a Massys fantasy’ is reductive but again that could be an underlying bias. Intersex ppl have existed since the dawn of time and HRT was around long before this painting was even made.
This could also be nothing to do with the moresca and it could be an older intersex or trans woman. The clothes being out of fashion or dated could be down to being a trans woman trying to not so much recapture her youth but live her 2nd adolescence cuz trans timelines work differently and history really needs to catch up to that. Ruth Pearce has a fantastic essay on it called Trans Temporalities and Non-Linear Ageing where she discusses examples such as a trans woman who begun to transition later in life while in a residential aged care home and who was regularly laughed at by staff when she was dressing in that they deemed unsuitable and so they would let her walk around in pretty undignified ways for their own entertainment rather than offer to help her. This painting could be a less extreme version of that, particularly if satire is the lens which (cis) ppl push us to view the painting with.
Or she is just wearing what she could get access to. When i first started wearing womens clothes, when i was younger, i was also wearing stuff that didn’t suit me very well and wasn’t at all fashionable but it was all i had access to. So it’s no surprise she is wearing a escoffion headdress if that is what she has access to 2nd hand or even as her wife’s clothes.
Ok let’s talk about the her relationship with The Old Man.
As i said earlier the painting is one of a pair and was intended to be shown alongside The Old Man who has a similar background and shelf in front of him and when placed side by side do seem to be a great fit to face each other.
Coming back to the rosebud, its supposed to indicate she is looking for a ‘suitor’ (the fancy way of saying out for a shag lol*) and the rosebud never blooms…cuz its a painting not a real rose…which symbolises that she never gets her shag.
Its being suggested that the old man’s raised hand is him turning her away, but is it?
The Old Woman and The Old Man on display in The Ugly Duchess exhibition at the National Gallery
The positioning of the hand on The Old Man doesn’t seem like a rejection kinda gesture but could be more to get her to be quiet or to wait, or even waving to get her attention. She could be a sex worker or even just looking for a good time 😏
If The Old Man is looking for a good time he could be a chaser and looking to get pegged (prince william would be proud) and this could be supported in the ways the figures are positioned as men are usually put on the left to symbolise dominance so when women are on the left it shows the woman is the dominant figure of the 2
We can see example of this in other images such as this one
The Unequal Couple by Israel van Meckenem, 1480
This etching is called The Unequal Couple and depicts an older woman paying a younger twinky man for his time and lets be honest this etching has such T4T vibes (for the cis ppl in the audience thats when trans ppl only date other trans ppl cuz its soooo much easier)
Conclusion
So whats the one conclusion i can bring this number to? Well again its all down to your own interpretation cuz none of us were there in the 1500s so we can never know
The catalogue/essay does lay out a convincing argument for why she could be intersex or trans without ever really saying it so i’m really happy to go on believing she is that based on that evidence but as always u can make ur own mind up
* it wouldn’t just mean shag it was also used to do with marriage but in this case it probably is a shag. Feel free to interpret it as marriage if u like tho
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