Was Old Duchess... a Duke?

THIS satirical 16th century portrait inspired Sir John Tenniel’s illustration of The Duchess in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

But despite being dubbed ‘The Old Duchess’ for more than 150 years, Quinten Massys’ An Old Woman could well be a man.

A new assessment of the Flemish artist’s painting, which hangs in The National Gallery, has thrown up the possibility that the subject is a male transvestite.

‘Yes, she is most likely a he,’ Emma Capron, curator of the London venue’s new exhibition, The Ugly Duchess: Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance, told The Observer. ‘A crossdresser as a play on gender. We know that Massys was very interested in carnivals, where men would impersonate women.’ The painting, created about 1513, is believed to be a comment on society’s obsession with maintaining a youthful ideal of beauty into old age. For the exhibition, which opens on Thursday, it will be reunited with its other half in a diptych: Massys’ An Old Man.

Labour’s education spokesman Bridget Phillipson has said she is backing the Government’s urgent review of sex education.

She told the Association of School and College Leaders’ conference that teaching gender identity ideology as fact is ‘an issue of children’s well-being’ and parents should be given access to material being taught. How Drag Queens Became A Trojan Horse To Promote Militant Trans Ideology – Pages 24-25