ABSTRACT
The chapter is devoted to the evaluation of human beauty in Lorenzo Valla's first extant work De voluptate (On pleasure, 1431). In this fictional dialogue, the representatives of three schools of thought—a Stoic, an Epicurean and a Christian—discuss the value of pleasure and beauty. Epicurean's speech, which describes the beauty of the human body as a source of pleasure, occupies the largest part of the text. Through this figure, Valla redefines beauty as a pursuit of both the senses and the intellect: Cultivating and contemplating the beautiful body become acts of philosophical and moral value. By attempting to reconcile the Epicurean and Christian positions, Valla introduces a new anthropology that grants corporeal pleasure and physical beauty a legitimate place within humanist ethics. De voluptate thus marks a pivotal moment in the revaluation of sensual experience, laying the foundation for later theories linking aesthetic pleasure, bodily discipline and moral perfection.
