| Abstrakt: |
Whiteness as a construct of ideal skin colour was created at the intersection of the visual arts, literature, natural history and medicine (among others). This paper traces the construction of whiteness through four case studies in sixteenth-century Venice and Rome, examining the works of Agnolo Firenzuola, Lodovico Dolce, Girolamo Mercuriale, and Giulio Mancini. It shows that this construct of whiteness was rooted in ancient medical theories of internal equilibrium and by the seventeenth century had been gradually transferred to the external surface. Notions of beauty, gender dynamics and the emergence of colonial and racial ideologies were closely linked to this ideal. In close interaction with medicine, sixteenth-century art played a crucial role in making complexion a central theme in both visual art and art theory, and in establishing a hierarchy through the ostentatious absence of non-whiteness. Depictions of darker skin tones did not appear until the seventeenth century when attention shifted from a colour mixture of red, white and black to a polarity of light and dark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
