Can the pressures women feel to look good be traced back to the sixteenth century? As the Renaissance visual world became populated by female nudes from the likes of Michelangelo and Titian, a vibrant literary scene of beauty tips emerged, fueling debates about cosmetics and adornment.
A sprightly cultural history ... She introduces us to women who, through luck and force of will were able to parlay their talents, skills and, inevitably, beauty into successes as painters, writers, performers and courtesans. And it says something about what rare birds these were that Burke is able to identify virtually all of them in one brief book.
A breezy and readable portrait of 16th-century Italy through the lens of beauty standards and practices ... The details are fascinating. The main challenge for this reader is keeping track of the many, many women mentioned, whose names and lives often receive just a few sentences or pages. Burke would have benefited from chiseling more of a narrative from her copious research, and including fewer rapid-fire anecdotes.
