{"id":58294,"date":"2026-04-09T16:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T16:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/58294\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T16:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T16:30:09","slug":"exhibition-review-bellezza-e-bruttezza-at-bozar-in-brussels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/58294\/","title":{"rendered":"Exhibition Review: \u201cBellezza e Bruttezza\u201d at Bozar in Brussels"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"A<\/a>Frans Floris de Vriendt, Pomona, 1565. \u00a9 Hallwylska Museet\/Statens, Historiska Museet, Stockholm. Photo Jens Mohr<\/p>\n

The old joke stipulates that once the New York Times has reported on a trend, it\u2019s safe to say that it\u2019s over. Consider, for example, their profile of the influencer Clavicular, a representative of the Looksmaxxing fad who \u201cbelieves any step toward increasing his beauty to be virtuous.\u201d About a month later, the young man was arrested in Florida<\/a> on a battery charge, which feels like a symbolic death knell for Looksmaxxing. What self-respecting advocate of human beauty would even consider a trip to Florida?<\/p>\n

A new exhibition at Bozar in Brussels, \u201cBellezza e Bruttezza,\u201d would argue that Looksmaxxing was always impossible, as you can\u2019t separate beauty from its counterpart. The exhibition brings together over 90 works from the late 15th through the 16th Centuries, including works by Sandro Botticelli<\/a>, Titian<\/a>, Leonardo da Vinci<\/a>, Albrecht D\u00fcrer<\/a>, Lucas Cranach The Elder<\/a> and Quinten Metsys<\/a> drawn from more than 60 lenders, including the Uffizi, the Louvre, the Vatican Museums and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.<\/p>\n

Curated by Chiara Rabbi Bernard<\/a>, the show examines how standards of beauty and ugliness evolved together. This thesis is embodied in the da Vinci work Grotesque Head of a Woman in Profile (ca. 1490-1500). It\u2019s only about the size of a playing card, done with a delicate touch in light sepia ink, but it\u2019s unforgettable. Da Vinci deemed these drawings \u201cvisi monstruosi,\u201d and the old woman does look like a goblin, her nose so upturned that it\u2019s more of a snout. The folds around her maw imply that it could open to gobble you up. These works were immediately popular and, as the catalogue emphasizes, da Vinci was not trying to mock or caricature his subjects. He drew them because they have power. They are compelling and magnetic, which is the main quality, whether we\u2019re discussing ugliness or beauty.<\/p>\n

Lucas Cranach the Elder painted more than 40 versions of couples with what we might call today problematic age gaps, wherein an older man courts a younger woman as she lightens his purse. Three of those works appear in this show, the most notable of which is Ill-Matched Couple (Young Man and Old Woman) (c. 1520-1522), one of only three occasions on which he flipped the script. With only three teeth left in her mouth, the titular old woman grins at the young man and stuffs his hand with coins. In this painting, the greatest beauty can be found in her purse.<\/p>\n

The poster image for the show is Frans Floris de Vriendt<\/a>\u2019s Pomona (1565). It\u2019s a scene from Ovid\u2019s Metamorphoses, with Pomona content in the bounty of her orchard, her breasts not abundant but fecund, her skin as plump as the fruit that surrounds her. She\u2019s in the process of rejecting the lascivious Pan, whose face is not so different from da Vinci\u2019s old woman. The show seems to propose that while beauty and ugliness are both compelling, the former may be defined by the rejection of the latter.<\/p>\n

\u201cBellezza e Bruttezza: The Ideal, the Real and the Caricature in the Renaissance<\/a>\u201d is on view at Bozar in Brussels through June 14, 2026.<\/p>\n

More exhibition reviews<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"One<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Frans Floris de Vriendt, Pomona, 1565. \u00a9 Hallwylska Museet\/Statens, Historiska Museet, Stockholm. Photo Jens Mohr The old joke…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[104],"tags":[32125,12605,3875,211,32121,210,32128,2129,32129,32124,32126,3713,32127,32122,32123,32130],"class_list":["post-58294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-albrecht-du00fcrer","tag-art-reviews","tag-arts","tag-belgium","tag-bozar-brussels","tag-brussels","tag-chiara-rabbi-bernard","tag-exhibitions","tag-frans-floris-de-vriendt","tag-leonardo-da-vinci","tag-lucas-cranach-the-elder","tag-museums","tag-quinten-metsys","tag-renaissance","tag-sandro-botticelli","tag-titian"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116375704493848529","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}