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]