Male/Female, Italy/Flanders, Michelangelo/Vittoria Colonna

This essay proposes a new reading of the famous passage comparing the devotional value of Flemish and Italian painting in Francisco de Holanda's (1517-84) Portuguese treatise Da pintura antigua. My purpose is to demonstrate that the polarizing and divisive claims made about Flemish painting are unmade in the text itself. The major grounds upon which Flemish art is attacked in the first of the four Roman dialogues are upheld for admiration in the second. The strongly misogynistic character of the passage on Flemish painting has obscured the more complex and shifting treatment of gender identity in the text.