Beauty: The Body as Artefact

Historical Sources from Cicero to Goya
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-032-73570-2
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 404 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 232 mm, Gewicht: 684 g

Beauty: The Body as Artefact traces the history of physical beauty in Western art and thought from antiquity to the eighteenth century. Bringing together foundational texts and newly translated works accompanied by scholarly commentaries, this volume explores how the human body was understood as both a product of nature and an artistic creation.

Examining the intersections of aesthetics, art theory, medical practices and cosmetics, it reveals how ideals of beauty and beautification shaped conceptions of gender, the body and artistic creation. The book focuses on the early modern period, when the cosmetic transformation of the body became closely associated with artistic imagery and techniques. Drawing on art-historical, philosophical and cultural perspectives, the volume presents key writings by figures from Cicero and Alberti to Behn and Hogarth, highlighting shifting notions of imitation, ornament and naturalness.

Suitable for undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars in art history, cultural history and gender studies, Beauty: The Body as Artefact offers a framework for understanding physical beauty as a historical and artistic category at the intersection of image, body and knowledge.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has

been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

(CC BY) license

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sammern, Romana

Saviello, Julia

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Lists of figures

List of contributors

Introduction: The beautiful body 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 (1st 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 twelfthth century)

Montserrat Cabré

6. Hildegard of Bingen: Hair and adornment of nuns (c.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

Über Autor(innen)

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).