ABSTRACT
The chapter draws on the most comprehensive book of secrets in early modern beauty culture, Giovanni Marinello's Gli ornamenti delle donne (The Book on the adornment of women, 1562), the most comprehensive book on early modern beauty culture. According to Marinello, a humanist physician, a beautiful body is a disciplined body, subject to strict rules and medical-cosmetic practices designed to protect it from the pitfalls of time, disease and other possible occurrences. Drawing on contemporary art theory, Marinello provides guidance on how to compete with, control and shape nature. Like a work of art, the body is thus a product of the mind and technical expertise. In this concept, beauty becomes an ethical and social matter, ultimately framed within marriage, fertility and the preservation of natural order.
