El Greco

El Greco, one of history's most talented artists (and one of my personal favorites) was born in 1541. His expressionistic, slightly disturbing style and elongated forms - just look at those fingers - brought confusion to his contemporaries, but have become heralded today.

Christ Carrying the Cross, ca. 1580s (?), oil on canvas

Portrait of a Cardinal, 1600, oil on canvas

Paul, the Apostle, 1606, oil on canvas

The Ugly Dutchess

This image of The Ugly Dutchess has become a sort of icon of gross humor and symbol of absurdity, but the truth may not be so funny...

From the Guardian:

"She is one of the most popular paintings in the National Gallery, whose rather unfortunate looks inspired illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. But one question has always puzzled: did the poor lady really look like this?

Today the Guardian can reveal that she did and was suffering from an exceptionally rare form of Paget's disease - an abnormality of the metabolism that enlarges and deforms the bones.

The portrait, An Old Woman, painted by the Flemish artist Quinten Massys in 1513, is popularly known as The Ugly Duchess and will be part of the National Gallery's eagerly awaited exhibition Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian, which opens next Wednesday.

Curators are particularly excited about this painting because two important discoveries have been made in recent research: firstly, the portrait is truthful and she almost certainly looked like that, and secondly, a long held historical theory that the painter was copying Leonardo da Vinci is wrong.

The medical research shows that she was suffering from an advanced form of Paget's disease - osteitis deformans - which enlarged her jaw bones, extended her upper lip and pushed up her nose. It also affected her...."

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