accoutrements of a hero besides these; he had golden hair on his
head, and had a fair, ruddy countenance." (_The Banquet of Dun na
n-gedh_, translated by O'Donovan, _Irish Archaeological Society_,
1842.)

The feminine ideal of the Italian poets closely resembles that of
those north of the Alps. Petrarch's Laura, as described in the
_Canzoniere_, is white as snow; her eyes, indeed, are black, but
the fairness of her hair is constantly emphasized; her lips are
rosy; her teeth white; her cheeks rosy; her breast youthful; her
hands white and slender. Other poets insist on the tall, white,
delicate body; the golden or blonde hair; the bright or starry
eyes (without mention of color), the brown or black arched
eyebrows, the straight nose, the small mouth, the thin vermilion
lips, the small and firm breasts. (Renier, _Il Tipo Estetico_,
pp. 87 et seq.)

Marie de France, a French mediaeval writer of the twelfth century,
who spent a large part of her life in England, in the _Lai of
Lanval_ thus described a beautiful woman: "Her body was
beautiful, her hips low, the neck whiter than snow, the eyes gray
(_vairs_), the face white, the mouth beautiful, the nose well
placed, the eyebrows brown, the forehead beautiful, the head
curly and blonde; the gleam of gold thread was less bright than
her hair beneath the sun."

The traits of Boccaccio's ideal of feminine beauty, a voluptuous
ideal as compared with the ascetic mediaeval ideal which had
previously prevailed, together with the characteristics of the
very beautiful and almost classic garments in which he arrayed
women, have been brought together by Hortis (_Studi sulle opere
Latine del Boccaccio_, 1879, pp. 70 et seq.). Boccaccio admired
fair and abundant wavy hair, dark and delicate eyebrows, and
brown or even black eyes. It was not until some centuries later,
as Hortis remarks, that Boccaccio's ideal woman was embodied by
the painter in the canvases of Titian.

The first precise description of a famous beautiful woman was
written by Niphus in the sixteenth century in his _De Pulchro et
Amore_, which is regarded as the first modern treatise on
aesthetics. The lady described is Joan of Aragon, the greatest
beauty of her time, whose portrait by Raphael (or more probably
Giulio Romano) is in the Louvre. Niphus, who was the ph