4 - Treating Bodily Impurities: Skin, Art, and Medicine

Summary

Abstract

Early modern physicians, theorists, and artists shared a knowledge of thehuman body that merged aesthetics with empirical knowledge about therealities of the physical constitution. For instance, books of secrets,such as Giovanni Marinello's ‘Women'sEmbellishments’ (Gli ornamenti delle donne,1562), discussed at great length ‘infirmities’ of theskin, including stains, odours and bodily fluids that unsettlednormative beauty standards. This essay considers examples of suchambivalent discourses in medical writings (Mercurialis) and books ofsecrets (Marinello, Della Porta) written in humanistic settings withregard to treatments of the body such as cosmetics practices in thecontext of Early Modern dietetics.

Keywords: art theory; books of secrets; complexion;cosmetics; dermatology; skin

Early modern physicians, theorists, and artists shared a knowledge of thehuman body that merged aesthetics with empirical knowledge about therealities of the physical constitution. For instance, books of secrets, suchas Giovanni Marinello's ‘Women's Embellishments’(Gli ornamenti delle donne, 1562), discussed at greatlength male and female indecencies and ‘infermities’ of theskin (infermita del corpo di fuori), including stains,odours and bodily fluids, that unsettled the book's normative beautystandards. This essay considers examples of such ambivalent discourses inmedical writings and books of secrets written in professional humanisticsettings with regard to treatments of the body such as cosmetics practicesin the context of Early Modern dietetics.

In the Early Modern period, the term ‘complexion’ meant morethan just the colouration, texture, and appearance of human skin. Instead,deriving from the Latin word complexio(‘complex’, ‘connection’, gr.κρáσις,transl. krásis, ‘mixture’,‘compound’), it referred to the combination of the humours,the four body fluids – black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood– that were thought to influence the human constitution, temperamentand health according to the ancient tradition of humouralism.

Accordingly, the modern conception of the human skin as the outer border ofthe body as well as its largest organ was unknown in the premodern area.Instead, the skin (Latin cutis or pellis)was considered a porous membrane without function, permeable to both theinside of the body and its environments. Likewise, the ideal of a flawless,intact unity of the dermis was unfamiliar. Rather, bathers cut and bled itby means of purification techniques such as bloodletting and cupping.