On the Beauty of Women - Hardcover

First published in 1548, Agnolo Firenzuola's On the Beauty of Women purports to be the record of two conversations shared by a young gentleman, Celso, and four ladies of the upper bourgeoisie of Prato, a small city in the vicinity of Florence. Meeting one afternoon in a sun-drenched garden, Celso and the ladies consider universal beauty as the proper, natural balance of individually beautiful parts. On a subsequent evening, the five move to the home of one of the ladies and attempt to fashion a composite picture of perfect beauty by combining the beautiful features of women they know. The standards of beauty established in the garden give way to the artistic, creative imagination of the human spirit, and the group's movement from garden to hall seems to echo the dialogue's movement from Nature to Art, from divinely to humanly created beauty.