Although differences in form, complexion, and physiognomy are to be
noted in different parts of France, they are less pronounced than in
Italy, concerning which it is therefore more difficult to make general
statements. “The barbarian invasions in the north, and the contact with
Greeks and Africans in the south,” says M. Figuier, “have wrought much
alteration in the primitive type of the inhabitants of Italy. Except in
Rome and the Roman Campagna, the true type of the primitive Latin
population is hardly to be found. The Grecian type exists in the South,
and upon the eastern slope of the Apennines, while in the North the
great majority of faces are Gallic. In Tuscany and the neighbouring
regions are found the descendants of the ancient Etruscans.... The
mixture of African blood has changed the organic type of the Southern
Italian to such an extent as to render him entirely distinct from his
Northern compatriots, the exciting influence which the climate has over
the senses imparting to his whole conduct a peculiar exuberance.”
In their estimate of Italian Beauty tourists differ widely. The raptures
and ecstasies of some writers are explained by others as due to the
æsthetic intoxication produced by sudden contact with a new type; and
they claim that a few years’ residence suffices to dispel these
illusions. On the judgment of the Italians themselves it is not safe to
rely, for that is tinged too much by local patriotism, the Milanese
claiming the pre-eminence in Beauty for themselves, while the Venetians,
Florentines, Romans, and Neapolitans blow their own horns respectively.
Professor Mantegazza thinks that the men are handsomer in Italy than the
women, of whom he allows only about ten per cent to have any claims to
real Beauty. Sir Charles Bell notes that “Raphael, in painting the head
of Galatea, found no beauty deserving to be his model; he is reported to
have said that there is nothing so rare as perfect beauty in woman; and
that he substituted for nature a certain idea inspired by his fancy.”
Montaigne, who travelled in Italy in the latter part of the sixteenth
century, expressed his surprise at the rarity of beauty in women and
girls, who at that time were kept in more than French seclusion. A
German author, Dr. J. Volkmann, wrote in 1770 that “there are few
beautiful women in Rome, especially among the higher classes; in Venice
and Naples more are to be seen. The Italian himself has a proverb which
says that Roman women are not beautiful” (quoted by Ploss).
Byron, in one of his letters, gives a glowing description of an Italian
beauty of the Oriental type whom he met, and then adds: “Whether being
in love with her has steeled me or not, I do not know; but I have not
seen many other women who seem pretty. The nobility, in particular, are
a sad-looking race—the gentry rather better.” In another place he writes
that “the general race of women appear to be handsome; but in Italy, as
on almost all the Continent, the highest orders are by no means a
well-looking generation.”
Yet was it not Byron who wrote of Italy that it is “the garden of the
world,” and that its “very weeds are beautiful”? And does not this apply
to the race as well as the soil? It is because they constantly live in a
garden, in the balmy air and mellowing sunshine, that Italians can to a
certain extent defy the laws of personal Hygiene, and flourish under
conditions which would torture us to death. Miss Margaret Collier
remarks, in _Our Home by the Adriatic_, that in the rural communities,
even among the well-to-do, to ask for a bath is to create alarm as to
the state of your health. And Berlioz speaks somewhere of Italian
peasant-girls “carrying heavy copper vessels and faggots on their heads;
but all so wretched, go miserable, so tattered, so filthily dirty, that,
_in spite of the beauty of the race_ and the picturesqueness of their
costume, all other feelings are swallowed up in one of utter
compassion.”
Could the cosmetic value of fresh air and sunshine be more strikingly
attested than by the fact that Berlioz could speak of “the beauty of the
race,” notwithstanding the national indifference to the laws of
cleanliness?
In regard to Romantic Love as a source of Beauty, the Italians also
occupy a somewhat anomalous position. In the rural districts French
matrimonial methods seem to be largely followed. Miss Collier mentions a
young lady who visited her to receive her congratulations on her
approaching marriage, and who, on being asked the name of her future
husband, replied naïvely, “Oh, I don’t know; papa has not yet told me
that.” The peasantry, however, are free to choose their own mates, and
it is among them that Italian Beauty is accordingly most prevalent. In
the cities the method of love-making is “operatic,” as we saw in the
chapter on Italian Love; but the main point is that Individual Choice is
not made impossible as in France, and that the Italians worship Love as
a law instead of looking on it with contemptuous cynicism and ridicule.
The way in which the Mixture of Races affects Italian Beauty affords a
fresh illustration of the superiority of the Brunette type. In Germany,
by general consent, Beauty is much more frequent in the South, where
brunettes abound, than in the North, where they are scarce. Hence we may
conclude that the Blonde type is improved by the intermixture of the
Brunette type. But is the Brunette type of Northern Italy improved to
the same degree by the admixture of Northern Blondes? Not in my
judgment. Venice and Milan and Bologna, it is true, boast many beautiful
women; but has any tourist in writing about these cities ever expressed
much admiration for Italian Blondes? And are not Naples and Capri, the
paradise of Brunettes, commonly regarded as the region where Italian
Beauty is seen at its best? Here it is chiefly dark races that have
intermingled, hence the eyes are sure to be of a deep brown colour;
whereas in Northern Italy the introduction of blonde blood produces the
lighter, less decided tints of the iris which we do not admire. This
disadvantage, it is true, is also encountered in South Germany, but it
is neutralised by the gain of dark eyebrows, and long black lashes, and
the more supple and rounded limbs of the South.
That mental culture adds much to Italian beauty cannot be said, for
Italian women of all classes are noted for their intellectual indolence.
But atonement is largely made for this by their extreme emotional
susceptibility. Blue skies, rank vegetation, pretty scenery, and a
natural love of music have softened and trained their feelings; and
though the Italian climate does not favour profound artistic culture it
warms the blood and incites the features to give expression to every
passing mood. It is this habit of emotional expression that has given a
unique charm and the power of graceful modulation to Italian features.
As a German artist, Herr Otto Knille, remarks of the Italians, “They
pose unintentionally. Their features, especially among the lower
classes, have been moulded through mimic expression practised for
thousands of years. Gesture-language has shaped the hands of many into
models of anatomic clearness. They have a complete language of signs and
gestures, which each one understands, as, for instance, in the ballet.
Add to this the innate grace of this race ... and we see that the
Italian artist has an abundance of material for copying, as compared
with which the German artist must admit his extreme poverty. Whoever has
lived in Italy is in a position to appreciate these advantages.... Think
of the neck, the nape, and the bust of Italian woman, the fine joints
and the elastic gait of both men and women. Nor are we much better
endowed as regards the physiognomy. The German potato-face is not a mere
fancy—the mirror which A. de Neuville has held up to us, though clouded
with prejudice, shows us an image not entirely untrue to life. We
artists know how rarely a head, especially one which lacks the
enchanting charm of youth, can be used as a model for anything but flat
realism. Most German faces, instead of becoming more clearly chiselled
and elaborated with age, appear more spongy, vague, and unmeaning.”
Winklemann’s remarks on Italian Beauty are in the same vein: “We seldom
find in the fairest portions of Italy the features of the face
unfinished, vague, and inexpressive, as is frequently the case on the
other side of the Alps; but they have partly an air of nobleness, partly
of acuteness and intelligence; and the form of the face is generally
large and full, and the parts of it in harmony with each other. The
superiority of conformation is so manifest that the head of the humblest
man among the people might be introduced in the most dignified
historical painting, especially one in which aged men are to be
represented. And among the women of this class, even in places of the
least importance, it would not be difficult to find a Juno. The lower
portion of Italy, which enjoys a softer climate than any other part of
it, brings forth men of superb and vigorously-designed forms, which
appear to have been made, as it were, for the purposes of sculpture.”
In confirmation of my statement that in Northern as in Southern Italy it
is the Brunette type that chiefly excites the admiration of the tourist,
I may finally cite Heine’s remarks on the women of Trent. For, although
Trent is a town of the Austrian Tyrol, it yet is practically an Italian
community. Had not business called him southwards, Heine relates in his
_Journey from Munich to Genoa_, he would have felt tempted to remain in
this town where “beautiful girls were moving about in bevies. I do not
know,” he adds, “whether other tourists will approve of the adjective
‘beautiful’ in this case; but I liked the women of Trent exceptionally
well. They were just of the kind I admire—and I do love these pale,
elegiac faces with the large black eyes that gaze at you so love-sick; I
love also the dusky tint of those proud necks which Phœbus already
has loved and browned with his kisses; ... but above all things do I
love that graceful gait, that dumb music of the body, those limbs with
their exquisitely rhythmic movements, luxurious, supple, divinely
careless, mortally languid, anon æthereal, majestic, and always highly
poetic. I love such things as I love poetry itself; and these figures
with their melodious movements, this wondrous concert of femininity
which delighted my senses, found an echo in my heart, and awoke in it
sympathetic strains.”