The Body as Artefact. Historical Sources

The book project explores the relationship between physical beauty, art, and cultural representations of the human body from antiquity to the late 18th century. Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches in art history, cultural history, history of science and medicine, and philosophy, the book examines how beautyboth natural and artificialwas conceptualized, idealized, and represented across different periods and contexts. The study engages with key texts from authors such as Ovid, Isidore of Seville, Trota of Salerno, Hildegard von Bingen, Giovanni Marinello, but also takes into account theorists and artists like Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, Peter Paul Rubens, Aphra Behn, William Hogarth, and Francisco de Goya. By tracing the oscillation between natural beauty and artistic enhancement, the book reveals how these concepts shaped aesthetics and the discourse about the body. The hypothesis suggests that beauty is rarely found in nature alone. Instead, it emerges through artistic and intellectual refinement, reflecting cultural and social ideals of embellishment and enhancement. This dual role of the human bodyas both subject and object of artistic representationhighlights how art shaped perceptions of physical beauty throughout history. The book concludes with a pivotal moment in intellectual history: the advent of philosophical aesthetics in the mid-18th century. When Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten defined beauty as the perfection of sensual cognition in 1750, the focus on the physical body receded from philosophical and art historical inquiry. However, this shift highlights how physical beauty, more tied to art and culture than to philosophy, has continued to captivate the imagination. The book was published in German in 2019 by Reimer and can now be translated into English in an expanded and revised edition. The book features 36 key historical texts, presented in their original languages alongside English translations and expert commentaries. These texts are contextualized within their historical and cultural settings, framed by a comprehensive introduction that traces the evolution of beauty ideals, artistic practices, and theoretical debates. This project represents the first comprehensive compilation of historical sources addressing the intersection of beauty and artistic representation. Many texts are translated into English for the first time, offering students and scholars a unique resource to explore the historical development of concepts surrounding the beautiful human body.