The arms are to be white, and
in the upper parts tinted with red; in their consistence fleshy and
muscular, but still soft as those of Pallas, when she stood before the
shepherd on Mount Ida--in a word, ripe, fresh, and firm. The hand
should be white, especially towards the wrist, but large and plump,
feeling soft as silk, the rosy palm marked with a few, but distinct and
not intricate lines; the elevations in it should be not too great, the
space between thumb and forefinger brightly colored and without
wrinkles, the fingers long, delicate, and scarcely at all thinner
towards the tips, with nails clear, even, not too long nor to square,
and cut so as to show a white margin about the breadth of a knife's
back.
Aesthetic principles of a general character occupy a very subordinate
place to these particulars. The ultimate principles of beauty,
according to which the eye judges 'senza appello,' are for Firenzuola a
secret, as he frankly confesses; and his definitions of 'Leggiadria,'
'Grazia,' 'Aria,' 'Maesta,' 'Vaghezza,' 'Venusta,' are partly, as has
been remarked, philological, and partly vain attempts to utter the
unutterable. Laughter he prettily defines, probably following some old
author, as a radiance of the soul. The literature of all countries can,
at the close of the Middle Ages, show single attempts to lay down
theoretic principles of beauty; but no other work can be compared to
that of Firenzuola.
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