ABSTRACT
The chapter focuses on specific body parts, analysing a sonnet of Francesco Petrarca's collection of poems, Il Canzoniere (1336/1374), his celebrated poetic cycle dedicated to his beloved Laura. Various parts of Laura's face, such as the forehead, eyes and mouth, and individual body parts, particularly the hands and feet, emerge as central features of her exceptional beauty. These features are repeatedly praised by the lyrical subject, yet her overall appearance remains fragmented, with certain features, such as the nose, going unmentioned—an issue already raised by Stefano Guazzo in his Civil conversazione (Civil conversation, 1574). The chapter situates this poetic fragmentation within the broader Renaissance debate on the representation of beauty, showing how Petrarch's ‘short canon’ of ideal features became a model for both poets and painters, linking literary description and visual representation in the formation of a European aesthetics of bodily beauty.
