Bellezza e Bruttezza: Beauty and Ugliness in the Renaissance.
Bozar offers us a dual perspective on Renaissance art and our conceptions of beauty and ugliness.
The myth of Beauty and the Beast did not wait for Jean Cocteau or Walt Disney. What enchants us? What repulses us? This is a philosophical question that has preoccupied thinkers from Aristotle to contemporary figures such as the Spanish philosopher Eugenio Trias and the late Roger Scruton, the British conservative who denounced artistic theories opposed to the concept of beauty.
A fascination with the ugly and repulsive
For opposing or at least diverse reasons, the faces of monsters and decrepit old men fascinate us as much as the pretty faces of Raffaello’ s models. Who can claim that Quasimodo is any less memorable a character than Esmeralda?The grimacing faces surrounding Christ in Bosch’s Carrying of the Cross are fascinating (you can admire them at the MSK in Ghent, alongside Inoubliables exposition). Equally fascinating is the wrinkled and distorted face of the old duchess by Quentin Massys, inspired by a caricature by Leonardo da Vinci. Massys was as capable of magnifying this repulsive ugliness as he was of sublimating the beauty of youth in his touching portrait of Mary Magdalene; a figure full of restraint and contemplation, in contrast to the sometimes brutal sensuality of her Italian counterparts. A painting that you can admire at the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp.
In the United States, freak shows, those travelling circuses of sinister memory, exhibited disabled people to eager crowds, probably to reassure them of their own normality. Todd Browning captured this phenomenon with rare acuity in his cult film Freaks, released in 1932, a year after his Dracula, another form of monstrosity.
A mirror relationship between beauty and ugliness
Monsters were not lacking in the Middle Ages but it was especially during the Renaissance which focused more on the earth and man than on heaven and angels, that the concepts of ugliness and beauty preoccupied both men and women. Cosmetic treatises proliferated, as did caricatures of deformed or mutilated beings. Beauty and ugliness drew us into a mirror-like relationship, each reflecting a distorted view of the other.
It is this mirror-like relationship along with the exchange of ideas between painters from the North and South, that Bozar invites us to explore with this new exhibition, Bellezza e Bruttezza (Beauty and Ugliness).
Focusing on the 15th and 16th centuries, a major turning point in our appreciation of these phenomena, it features works by major artists such as Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Cranach the Elder and Quentin Massis. Some of these works are being exhibited in Belgium for the first time. Don’t miss this opportunity to experience these contradictory emotions.
Bozar, Ravenstein Gallery, Brussels, from 20 February to 14 June 2026, Bellezza e Bruttezza