ABSTRACT
In the courts of fifteenth-century Italy, radiant male beauty manifested aristocratic status and privilege. Beautiful, charismatic male bodies drew gazes and desires. The princes of the Sforza of Milan and other dynasties expected to be described as beautiful, and their health and beauty regimens aimed at fashioning fair pulchritude. By examining an envoy's description of Galeazzo Maria Sforza's new bride, Bona of Savoy, this chapter explores the ways that male and female beauty both intersected and differed. Hands will emerge as resonant sites for the display and the enhancement of lordly beauty. Crucially, the chapter clarifies the grave political stakes for male beauty and underscores the great lengths to which noble men went to cultivate it.
