An Elderly Couple

Gossart was probably trained in Bruges before becoming a master in Antwerp in 1503. He entered the service of Philip of Burgundy, later Bishop of Utrecht, an illegitimate son of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. In 1508, when Philip went on a mission to the Vatican, Gossart probably accompanied him to record ancient monuments, seemingly the first Flemish artist to do so. The trip had a momentous effect not only on his own work, but on Netherlandish art in general. Under the impact of Gossart and like-minded ‘Romanists’, the native pictorial tradition rooted in the work of van Eyck and van der Weyden was rejected in favour of an Italianate Renaissance idiom ultimately based on ancient Greco-Roman sculpture, anatomical studies and mathematical perspective.

The picture illustrated here shows his mature style, in this instance equally compounded of Italianate elements and Flemish naturalism. It is the artist’s only known double portrait. Unlike many of Gossart’s sitters, these elderly people seem to belong to the prosperous bourgeoisie rather than the nobility. Shown in bust-length against a dark green background, they are strongly lit from the upper left. The light unites them within the picture space, revealing underlying structure, while at the same time accentuating the different tinges of their flesh and the sagging of their tired skin.

The badge on the man’s hat shows two naked figures with a cornucopia, perhaps an ironic comment on the sitters’ present state. Yet in an age when toothlessness and wrinkles were subjects of ridicule, Gossart endows the couple with enormous stoical dignity. The man, more active, grasps his fur collar and the metal head of a cane, and looks sternly ahead. But the woman, posed behind him with her hands concealed, her eyes downcast, is no less firm. Her white head-dress is reflected on her cheek and chin and casts a translucent shadow on her forehead, thus lightening the tonal contrasts visible in her husband’s face, and at the same time giving her an equal share of monumental authority.