ABSTRACT
The chapter examines Lodovico Dolce's Dialogo dei colori (Dialogue on colours, 1557) within the context of sixteenth-century Venetian art theory, with a particular focus on the emergence of fair, rosy skin as the ideal of human beauty. Building on the colourist tradition associated with Titian, Dolce defined beauty as a perfect balance of white and red, and located at the essence of artistic excellence in the lifelike depiction of flesh ( incarnato ). Venetian theorists regarded the female complexion as the core of beauty, linking sensuality and femininity to colour and softness. This was in contrast to the masculine principles of drawing and form. Thus, Dolce's writings not only shaped the aesthetic ideal of fair skin but also contributed to the broader cultural construction of whiteness as a visual and moral norm in early modern Europe.
