Unequal Marriage

Quentin Massys was the first great painter of Antwerp. His work joins the fine detail of the Early Netherlandish painters with a new interest in character, from deeply devout religious scenes to sharp, sometimes grotesque satires of greed and folly. Born in Leuven, he became a master in the Antwerp painters’ guild in 1491. An old legend says he had first worked as a blacksmith. He painted large altarpieces, such as The Holy Kinship and The Entombment of Christ, and was a friend of the humanist Erasmus, whose portrait he painted. His best known works are The Moneylender and His Wife (1514) in the Louvre and A Grotesque Old Woman, known as The Ugly Duchess, in the National Gallery in London. An Allegory of Folly and his Ecce Homo scenes show both sides of his art: biting humour and intense religious feeling.