In the Renaissance, a rendition of the ideal beauty consisted of specific traits found in the body of a woman. In “On Beautiful Women,” Elizabeth Cropper defined these characteristics as established in notes on painting by Pietro Testa, a notable draftsman and printmaker from the 17^th century.  While Testa is a 17^th-century artist, he is repeating ideas from the 16^th century, thus his notes offer scholars today some insight into 16^th-century notions of ideal beauty.  Briefly, the traits that construe a beautiful woman are: thin, long, and blonde hair; dark-haired and arc-shaped, tapering eyebrows; blue or brown oval shaped eyes; soft and rosy ears; white and rosy rounded cheeks and chin, which also had a petite dimple at its center; small mouth with no more than six visible teeth that shone bright white; and a rosy-white, slender neck which smoothly transitioned to the depression formed by one’s collar bones and finally the square shoulders that were not too angular.¹  These were the same traits that influenced Titian.  Titian used this ideal beauty and combined them with societal gender roles to create a portrait.  Titian became the innovative High Renaissance artist that he is seen as today because he painted an ideal beauty in both portraits of allegorical subjects and in realistic characterizations of women.  The latter are portraits, but simultaneously a depiction of the standardized ideal beauty because Titian personified female gender roles.  Titian’s allegorical subjects are an ideal beauty, yet also a portrait because he gave the figure an individual personality while still conforming to feminine societal duties.

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1. Elizabeth Cropper, “On Beautiful Women, Parmigianino, Petrarchismo, and the Vernacular Style,” Art Bulletin (58, 1976), 374.