(Renier, _Il Tipo Estetico_,
pp. 87 et seq.)
Marie de France, a French mediaeval writer of the twelfth century,
who spent a large part of her life in England, in the _Lai of
Lanval_ thus described a beautiful woman: "Her body was
beautiful, her hips low, the neck whiter than snow, the eyes gray
(_vairs_), the face white, the mouth beautiful, the nose well
placed, the eyebrows brown, the forehead beautiful, the head
curly and blonde; the gleam of gold thread was less bright than
her hair beneath the sun."
The traits of Boccaccio's ideal of feminine beauty, a voluptuous
ideal as compared with the ascetic mediaeval ideal which had
previously prevailed, together with the characteristics of the
very beautiful and almost classic garments in which he arrayed
women, have been brought together by Hortis (_Studi sulle opere
Latine del Boccaccio_, 1879, pp. 70 et seq.). Boccaccio admired
fair and abundant wavy hair, dark and delicate eyebrows, and
brown or even black eyes. It was not until some centuries later,
as Hortis remarks, that Boccaccio's ideal woman was embodied by
the painter in the canvases of Titian.
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