Portrait of an old woman

Portraits of elderly women were relatively rare in Renaissance painting, which overwhelmingly favored youth and beauty in its female subjects. Metsys’s 1515 portrait of an old woman takes a different approach, treating aging female features with the same observational precision he brought to his male portrait subjects. The painting may relate to Metsys’s famous satirical portraits of grotesque old women, though this example is more sympathetic than satirical.

The unsparing rendering of wrinkled skin, thin lips, and sagging features demonstrates Metsys’s commitment to visual truth over idealization. The tight headdress frames the face, concentrating attention on the physiognomy of age.