In this Boccaccio is a master--not in the 'Decameron,' where the character of the tales forbids lengthy description, but in the romances, where he is free to take his time.In his 'Ameto' he describes a blonde and a brunette much as an artist a hundred years later would have painted them--for here, too, culture long precedes art.In the account of the brunette--or, strictly speaking, of the less blonde of the two--there are touches which deserve to be called classical.In the words 'la spaziosa testa e distesa' lies the feeling for grander forms, which go beyond a graceful prettiness; the eyebrows with him no longer resemble two bows, as in the Byzantine ideal, but a single wavy line; the nose seems to have been meant to be aquiline; the broad, full breast, the arms of moderate length, the effect of the beautiful hand, as it lies on the purple mantle--all this foretells the sense of beauty of a coming time, and unconsciously approaches to that of classical antiquity.In other descriptions Boccaccio mentions a flat (not medievally rounded) brow, a long, earnest, brown eye, and round, not hollowed neck, as well as--in a very modern tone--the 'little feet'
and the 'two roguish eyes' of a black-haired nymph.
Whether the fifteenth century has left any written account of its ideal of beauty, I am not able to say.The works of the painters and sculptors do not render such an account as unnecessary as might appear at first sight, since possibly, as opposed to their realism, a more ideal type might have been favored and preserved by the writers.In the sixteenth century Firenzuola came forward with his remarkable work on female beauty.We must clearly distinguish in it what he had learned from old authors or from artists, such as the fixing of proportions according to the length of the head, and certain abstract conceptions.
