A Rose a Day No.10

This is one of the oddest paintings in the National Gallery, London. It’s also one ot he oddest of all paintings including roses.

It is a work by the Flemish painter Quinten Massys and is entitled ‘An Old Woman’ (c.1513) or ‘The Ugly Duchess’. The grotesque old temptress is holding a tiny pink rosebud – symbol of feminine beauty and sexual ripeness – in her ageing hand up against a bulging and overripe décolletage. A few rooms away is the work I discussed in A Rose A Day No.1, Jean-Marc Nattier’s Rococo period portrait of Manon Balletti. What a contrast!