Beauty: The Body as Artefact Historical Sources from Cicero to Goya

Acknowledgements

Lists of figures

List of contributors

Introduction: The beautiful body as artefact

Romana Sammern and Julia Saviello

1. Cicero: Perfect beauty as compound (ca. 86–84 BC)

Julia Saviello

2. Ovid: The appearance of natural beauty (1^st century AD)

Romana Sammern

3. Apuleius: The allure of beautiful hair (ca. 160/170)

Julia Saviello

4. Isidore of Seville: Painting as make-up (c. 620)

Wolf-Dietrich Löhr

5. Trota of Salerno: Transmitting beautifying knowledge (first half of the twelfth century)

Montserrat Cabré

6. Hildegard of Bingen: Hair and adornment of nuns (ca. 1150)

Philippe Cordez

7. Gerard of Cremona: Galen in translation – canonicity and race (before 1187)

Robert Brennan

8. Vincent of Beauvais: Makeup as the loss of the divine image (1247)

Wolf-Dietrich Löhr

9. Francesco Petrarca: Fragments and colours of beauty (ca. 1336/1374)

Julia Saviello

10. Franco Sacchetti: Women’s art as a correction of creation (ca. 1390)

Wolf-Dietrich Löhr

11. Lorenzo Valla: The pleasure of beauty (1431)

Alberto Saviello

12. Leon Battista Alberti: Genealogy of beauty (1433)

Julia Saviello

13. Giovanni Borromeo: Male beauty, cosmetics and power (1468)

Timothy McCall

14. Leonardo da Vinci: Unkempt and naturally beautiful (ca. 1492)

Julia Saviello

15. Baldassare Castiglione: The charm of effortlessness (1528)

Romana Sammern

16. Albrecht Dürer: The diversity of the human body (1528)

Romana Sammern

17. Erasmus von Rotterdam: The body as a moving image (1530)

Wolf-Dietrich Löhr

18. Agnolo Firenzuola: The woman as a beautiful object (1541)

Romana Sammern

19. Benedetto Varchi: Grace and beauty (1540s?)

Fabian Jonietz

20. Giovanni Marinello: Cosmetic recipes (1562)

Elena Lazzarini

21. Alessandro Allori: A beautiful surface and bones that evoke sadness (1560s)

Helen Barr

22. Lodovico Dolce: The beauty of the female complexion (1565)

Romana Sammern

23. Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo: Graceful folds – the textile shell of the body (1584)

Julia Saviello

24. Giovan Battista Della Porta: The physiognomy of the beautiful body (1586)

Romana Sammern

25. Peter Paul Rubens: The beauty of trained bodies (ca. 1610)

Romana Sammern

26. William Shakespeare: The nature of the beautiful (ca. 1610)

Laura Gronius

27. Girard Thibault: Movement in harmony with the body (1630)

Julia Saviello

28. Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Similarity and idealization (1665)

Heiko Damm

29. Marie Meurdrac: Teaching ladies the art of beauty (1666)

Erin Griffey and Victoria Munn 

30. Gérard Audran: Measuring the ideal body of antiquity (1683)

Julia Saviello

31. Aphra Behn: Slavery and ‘the standard of true beauty’(1688)

Kim F. Hall and Tapiwa Gambura

32. Gerard de Lairesse: The colours of nature (1707)

Ulrike Kern

33. William Hogarth: Curls and other beautiful entanglements (1753)

Julia Saviello

34. Alexander Cozens: The end of the canon of beauty (1778)

Anja Zimmermann

35. Claude-Henri Watelet: Flesh tones and the beauty of white skin (1788)

Mechthild Fend

36. Francisco de Goya: Painting as make-up (1794)

Wolfram Pichler

Index

Biography

Romana Sammern is an art historian based at the Inter-University Organization Arts & Knowledges (University of Salzburg/Mozarteum University). She researches the intersections of body, image, and medicine in the early modern period. She holds a PhD from Humboldt University of Berlin and a habilitation from the University of Passau. Her research has been supported by fellowships in Austria, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Julia Saviello is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Art History, Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research centres on hair and the human body, objects as image carriers, and the intersections of ceramics and nature in the early modern period. Her publications include Verlockungen. Haare in der Kunst der Frühen Neuzeit (2017) and Der Schild und das Bild (2026).

‘From its beguiling cover to its engaging and carefully curated contents, this is a must-have addition to the early modern corpus and the burgeoning research fields of beauty and embodiment. With texts from Cicero to Goya—each presented in the original alongside translations and pithy commentary by a stellar international team of cutting-edge scholars—students and instructors alike have been gifted a rare and rich package here.’

Catherine Kovesi, Professor of History, University of Melbourne

‘Is human beauty eternal and unchanging, or highly subjective? Should you praise or condemn cosmetic practices? This edition of key texts shows how writers and philosophers grappled with the question of how to define, modify and manage male and female beauty from antiquity to the eighteenth century. With original texts on beauty, translations, and insightful commentaries, this is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the history of beauty.’

Evelyn Welch, Vice-Chancellor and President, University of Bristol