. The art of the Italian renaissance; a handbook for students and travellers. ghts andshadows, a whispered dialogue, to A\hich A\e never ?v\eary of listening. The brown eyes look at us from the narrow oval of the lids. They arenot the flashing Quattrocentist eves ; their glance is veiled. The lowerlids run almost horizontally and recall the Gothic forms of e\es, in whichthis motive is used to produce the effect of fulness and liquidity. Thewhole surface under the eyes speaks of an intense sensitiveness, of delicatenerves beneath the skin. One striking trait is the absence of curve
. The art of the Italian renaissance; a handbook for students and travellers. ghts andshadows, a whispered dialogue, to A\hich A\e never ?v\eary of listening. The brown eyes look at us from the narrow oval of the lids. They arenot the flashing Quattrocentist eves ; their glance is veiled. The lowerlids run almost horizontally and recall the Gothic forms of e\es, in whichthis motive is used to produce the effect of fulness and liquidity. Thewhole surface under the eyes speaks of an intense sensitiveness, of delicatenerves beneath the skin. One striking trait is the absence of curved planes of the eye-sockets pass without any sort of accentuationinto the excessively high forehead. This is no individual peculiarity. Itcan be shown from a passage in // Cortlgiano- that it vas fashionable for ^ Politian, Gioatra I. 50. Lampeggiu dun dolce e vago riso. - Baldassare Castiglione, // Cortiijiano (1516). It is said tlieru (in I!k. I.) that the men copy tlie women in plucking out the hairs of tlie eyebrows ami fureliead (jidarsi le •Aglia e lafronte). D 2. 36 THE ART OP THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ladies to pluck out their evebrows. It was also considered a beauty toshow a wide expanse of forehead, and therefore the hair on the front ofthe head was sacrificed. This accounts for the immense foreheads in thestatues of voung girls bv Mino and Desiderio. The delight in themodelling of the white surfaces, which the chisel reproduced so tenderlyin marble, outweighed every other consideration. The natural divisionswere eliminated and the upper parts exaggei-ated out of all measure. Thestyle of the Monna Lisa in this respect is thoroughly Quattrocentist. Thefashion changed immediately afterwards. The forehead was made lower,and a distinct advance is noticeable in the rigorously defined the Madrid copy of the J/o«wrt Lisa the eyebrows have been deliberatelyadded. Even in Leonardos own drawings (for example in the beautifulfull-face with the head inclined in the
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