XI
Virtuous or frail, the ladies of the Trecento, as of the two preceding centuries, were all alike as sisters in their loveliness. Or rather, we may say that only one type of beauty was recognized as such, all mediæval heroines were required to conform to that absolute standard.
In our eyes the dark-eyed beauties of Murillo, the warm blondes of Titian and Palma, the slender angels of Perugino, the powdered espiègle ladies of Gainsborough and Reynolds; the majestic form of the Venus of Milo, and the somewhat mannered elegance of Tanagra, are all, in their kind, types of accomplished beauty. Many different ideals have enlarged and exercised our taste. But, of all the candidates on our list, the Middle Ages would have admitted only the Perugino angel and the Tanagra statuette.
This lessens, at any rate, the difficulty of description. The mediæval beauty was always golden-haired, either naturally or by the aid of art. Her hair was very fine, rippling in long curves above a fair broad forehead. One of her distinctive charms was the large space between the brows, the “plaisant entr’euil” so often sung of early poets; very few things seemed more hideous to our forefathers than shaggy eyebrows meeting in the middle. It was also a great disadvantage for the eyebrows to be fair. They should be several shades darker than the hair, narrow, pencilled, delicately arched; Burns’—
“Eyebrows of a darker hue
Bewitchingly o’erarching.”
Eyes, not blue, but “grey as glass,” “plus vairs que cristal,” not over-large, somewhat deeply set, and always bright, keen, and shining as a falcon’s.
Below these brilliant eyes, a small straight nose, rather long than short, but above all “traitis”—that is to say, neat and straight—divided two oval cheeks, with dimples that appear at the bidding of a smile. A fresh, faint pink-and-white colour, like the first apple-blossom, must flourish in these little cheeks. The lips are much redder, slightly pursed over the tiny pearly teeth; “la bouche petite et grossette,” says the prosaic Roman de la Rose; but Ulrich von Lichtenstein expressed his meaning better in his “kleinvelhitzerôter munt,” his “little, very fire-red mouth;” or the author of Guillaume le Faucon, who likens his heroine’s lips to a scarlet poppy-bud:
“Tant estoit vermeille et close.”
Sometimes the small mouth was only half shut, as if about to speak:
“Les lèvres jointes en itel guise
C’un poi i lessa ouverture
Selonc réson et par mesure,”
says the author of Narcisse.[67]
The cleft chin and the ears must be small and round and white, above a long neck, with a full white throat. The fairness of this throat, its delicacy and transparence, was the sine quâ non of feminine loveliness. “When she drank red wine, one saw the rosy fluid through her throat,” say the poets.
The beauty of the Middle Ages was invariably slender, slim, and round as a willow-wand. The shoulders are small, the whole figure “greslette et alignie”; long-drawn out in slenderness, with slim, round, long limbs, and slim, round, long fingers, that show no joints, and terminate in trim, shining nails, cut very close. The bust is high, with neat, round, well-divided breasts, and a slim, round waist. When Eustache Deschamps, in his 960th Ballad, sings the charms of a lady quite correctly like this portrait, he ends with saying:
“Mais sur toutes portez bien vos habiz
Plus que nulle dame ne damoiselle
Qui soit vivante en terre n’en paÿs.”[68]
Poets in every century have laid great store by that
“something i’ the gait
Gars ony dress look weel.”
The Roman de la Rose, that manual of the fourteenth century, devotes a score or so of verses to this doctrine of deportment.
“‘Marche joliettement,’ walk prettily, mincingly, showing your pretty little shoes, so well made they fit without a wrinkle.... And if your dress trail behind on the pavement, yet take thought to lift it a little towards the front, as if the wind had caught it, so that every one who passes you may notice the dainty well-shod slimness of your feet.
“And if you have a long mantle—one of those long, full cloaks that almost entirely hide your charming figure—with your two hands and your two arms manage to open it wide in front, whether the day be fair or foul, even as a peacock spreads his tail.”