Figure 1.4. Albrecht Dürer, image of “normal” woman (front and profile), Four Books on Human Proportion, 1528.
Figure 1.5. Albrecht Dürer, image of “normal” woman (back), Four Books on Human Proportion, 1528.
Urbino is a case in point. A thriving center of the Italian Renaissance, Urbino was distinct from other centers of the Renaissance such as Antwerp and Venice in one critical respect: its involvement in the slave trade was minimal. For this reason, the question of black aesthetics was not a topic that many artists or philosophers considered, and Africans were less commonly represented in art from the region. Urbino was, however, an important place for the discussion and dissemination of ideas about female beauty. It was also the birthplace of Raphael, one of the most influential painters of the High Renaissance. Raphael devoted less energy than did Dürer to waxing intellectual about method. Nevertheless, as an artist, he remained deeply invested in the craft of representing true beauty.
In 1514 Raphael drafted a letter on the topic to his friend Conte Baldassare Castiglione. The letter served as one of the few instances in which the artist delineated, in writing, his approach to portraying feminine loveliness. In it, Raphael confided to Castiglione that “in order to paint one beautiful woman, I’d have to see several beautiful women.”23 The statement was reminiscent of Dürer’s claim that God dispersed beauty over the whole world and that an artist needed a diversity of models to comprehend beauty in all its richness. Indeed, the two artists were colleagues; while the German artist was older and already celebrated by the time of Raphael’s rise to fame, by 1514 the two were part of something of a mutual admiration society, exchanging prints and praising one another’s work.24
To Raphael, as to Dürer, no one woman could have it all. In order to comprehend and later represent beauty in a woman, he needed to work with as many women as possible who were judged to be attractive by the casual male observer. Sadly, due to what Raphael described as a shortage of both beautiful women and competent male judges, he explained that instead he usually relied on his own best judgment: “I make use of a certain idea which comes to my mind.”25 This may have been something of a half-truth. The Renaissance represented a rebirth of ancient Greek and Roman art and philosophy. Italian high society at the time was saturated by a rediscovery of the art and ideas of classical antiquity. Urbino itself was teeming with neoclassicists, many of whom were members of the Florentine Academy, a center for the discussion and dissemination of neoclassical, and especially Neoplatonic, ideas.
The “idea” that came to Raphael’s mind was at least partially inspired by current neoclassical theories about true beauty, which described beauty as requiring symmetry, harmony, and perfect proportionality.26 His own work is extolled in part for its achievements in enlivening these classical ideals, even if he was perhaps unwilling to articulate the extent to which he was conversant with them.
The friend to whom he divulged his process of depicting female beauty, Castiglione, was by contrast an open and ardent Neoplatonist. Nearly fifteen years after Raphael sent him a letter with his mini-treatise on beauty, Castiglione’s tome, The Book of the Courtier, appeared in print. In it, he used fictionalized versions of what he claimed were real conversations to reveal the aristocratic ideal of feminine loveliness at the court of Urbino.
In one conversation, a man by the name of Giuliano de Medici is urged to explain exactly what qualified as “beauty.” Giuliano offers the generally well-respected neoclassical view shot through with Christian idioms, stating that “there are divers [sic] sorts of beauty.”27 When this definition proves unsatisfying, he becomes more specific. Differing from the likes of Dürer, Giuliano betrayed a decided preference for a lady who is neither “too fat” nor “too thin”:
Since women may and ought to take more care for beauty than men—and there are divers sorts of beauty—this Lady ought to have the good sense to discern what those garments are that enhance her grace.… Thus, if she is a little more stout or thin than the medium, or fair or dark, let her seek help from dress, but as covertly as possible.28
Giuliano’s preference for women he describes as “medium,” a term that was seemingly self-evident and yet maddeningly unspecific, was part of the Italian neoclassicists’ understanding of beauty. As with Dürer, harmony and proportionality were integral, a point Giuliano underscores when he states, “If the form of the whole body is fair and well proportioned, it attracts and allures anyone who looks upon it.”29 But whereas Dürer calculated proportionate physiques in a manner that separated the concepts of “proportion” and “size,” the Italian humanists of the Florentine Academy had a slightly more exacting standard of female beauty, one derived from the ancients. Their model was a Roman goddess, resurrected in the Florentine Academy in the late fifteenth century. Her name was Venus.30
Giuliano did not use the name “Venus” in The Book of the Courtier. He didn’t need to. Giuliano de Medici carried the family name that was synonymous with the goddess’s return to glory. His father was Lorenzo de Medici, celebrated fifteenth-century Florentine ruler, patron of the arts, and sponsor of the Florentine Academy. In the 1460s, Lorenzo became friends with a young artist whom his own father (Piero di Cosimo de Medici) had taken in shortly before his death, the famed Alessandro Botticelli.
Figure 1.6. Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, c. 1482–1485. Image courtesy of Art Resource, New York.
Botticelli’s achievements were sundry, but the artist was best known for his images of Venus, the goddess of love. His first Venus, La Primavera, painted around 1482, shows the goddess standing in a mythically dark forest, surrounded by enticing globes of fruit. She is flanked by gods and nymphs, dancing joyously and reveling in the love inspired by nature’s beauty and bounty. Botticelli’s next Venus was his most iconic painting. The Birth of Venus depicts the goddess naked atop a shell that is gliding into shore. Zephyrs from the left blow her golden hair as she gathers it in her right hand and uses it to conceal her pelvic area. With her left hand she half-heartedly attempts to cover her breasts, coyly leaving one available for the viewer’s gaze. From the right, her handmaiden approaches to provide her with the garments that would be needed to clothe the demure goddess in such a realm.
Botticelli, who was Lorenzo de Medici’s friend and confidant, was a member of the Florentine Academy. He was thus inspired by the poetic works and philosophical tête-à-têtes to which he was privy. The Birth of Venus is often regarded as the earliest Renaissance painting to reimagine a style known as “Venus Pudica,” in which the modest Venus reaches to cover her pubis and often her breasts.31
Figure 1.7. Raphael, La Fornarina, 1518–1520. Image courtesy of Art Resource, New York.
Botticelli would not have been the only artist inspired by the Medicis to paint the goddess of love. Raphael knew the Medicis well, having been commissioned more than once to paint portraits of members of the family. He might not have mentioned a neoclassical influence for his portraits of beautiful women in his letters to Castiglione, a but he painted several Venuses in his lifetime. One of the most mystifying and controversial was a portrait of a nude woman, her hands modestly covering her private parts—said to be his mistress and muse, Margherita Luti.32
The character Giuliano de Medici mentions none of this in his exegesis on beauty in The Book of the Courtier. His family history and their eminence in molding Renaissance aesthetic ideals were left unstated. His contemporaries, however, would have been well aware of the family’s influence on feminine aesthetic standards. This may have been why Castiglione chose to make Giuliano his mouthpiece on the question of feminine loveliness.
Giuliano’s stated preference for women who were both “medium” and “proportionate” was representative of the Italian canon of perspective, as it was embodied by Venus. It is relevant, of course, that this preference was not so rigidly codified that women who were stout or spindly might not be able to make themselves attractive, according to Giuliano,