An Elderly Couple

Nobody knows who these two are. Their clothes point to the northern Netherlands in the 1510s, though people of their age may not have kept up with fashion, and there is no name, coat of arms or inscription to go on. What Gossaert gives instead is age, without any softening. Their mouths turn down, their eyes are dull, their cheeks sag. They sit so close that their shoulders overlap, and yet each looks away, past the other and past us. On the man's black hat is a gold badge with a cameo of two classical lovers in an embrace, the one pair in the picture that touches. It is painted on parchment, a single sheet later laid down on fine canvas, perhaps so that it could travel. Under the paint the woman's head was carefully drawn and hardly changed, while the man's was sketched more freely and altered many times, and he may have been painted after her.