Defining beauty: Rubens’s female nudes
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Defining beauty: Rubens’s female nudes is an essay by Karolien De Clippel.
Excerpt:
- "Defining the canon in the field of depicting nudes on the basis of Van Mander would result in a series of Netherlandish as well as Italian names.Leading figures from the north appear to be the aforementioned Jacob De Backer and Frans Badens, but also Frans Floris (ca. 1516-1570) and Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617). Southern figures were Michelangelo, Raphael, Correggio and, most of all, Titian."
- Indeed, the idea of female beauty led to a remarkable comparison paralleling the female body with that of a horse, ‘the most noble and elegant amongst animals’. Rubens drew the analogy in a long enumeration listing the following similarities: a small and slender head, large and black eyes, a long neck, a broad chest, a long mane of hair, a back which is supposed to be short, flat and upright, an abdomen which is slightly curved and decreasing down-wards, buttocks which are not stretched or hanging, but round, ample, firm and fleshy, a small womb, thighs that are plump, certainly on the side where they are attached to the bottom, small, slightly raised feet and finally, the preferably blond hair."
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