A smiling young woman and an elderly man with exaggerated features embrace and gaze into each other’s eyes while a person dressed in the orange costume of a fool lurks behind them to our left in this horizontal painting. All three have pale skin and are shown from the chest up behind a ledge or tabletop against a black background. The older man to our right wears a dark teal-blue garment and a bright crimson-red head covering that drapes over both shoulders. Wrinkles and age spots cover his face, which is accentuated by a bulbous nose and a leering smile that exposes missing teeth. His arms…
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Ill-Matched Lovers

Quentin Massys (Netherlandish, 1466 - 1530)

c. 1520/1525

Medium
oil on panel
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
overall: 43.2 x 63 cm (17 x 24 13/16 in.) ; framed: 61.6 x 81.3 x 7.6 cm (24 1/4 x 32 x 3 in.)
Culture
Antwerp
Museum
National Gallery of Art, CNE-R
Credit line
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund
Rights
Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed

View at the National Gallery of Art