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From Classical to Chic: Reconsidering the Prints from Varie acconciature di teste usate da nobilissime dame in diverse città d'Italia by Giovanni Guerra, c. 1589

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 82; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00233609.2013.822017

1651-2294

Chia-Hua Yeh,

Historical Art and Culture Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size AcknowledgementsI would like to express my great gratitude to the HERA Project »Fashioning the Early Modern: Creativity and Innovation in Europe, 1500–1800«, for offering bursaries to support my participation in the workshops of the project in Stockholm and London. The university fund for my field trip and this journal publication by National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan is also gratefully acknowledged. Additionally, my special thanks go to Professor Evelyn Welch, who brought this material to my attention, and to Dr. Patrik Steorn, who kindly offered his photography of Giovanni Guerra's prints taken from the collection at NMS, while the collection is closed to the public due to a major renovation project of the museum. The comments by two anonymous reviewers on an earlier draft of this article were also very helpful and very much appreciated.SummaryThis article focuses on a series of prints from a costume book titled Varie acconciature di teste usate da nobilissime dame in diverse città d'Italia by Giovanni Guerra, published in Rome c.1589. The images are rich in their gender connotation and various stylistic references to both conventional and contemporary concepts of ideal beauty in terms of hairstyle. Through analysing the design and visual elements of images, such as braids of hair, the article considers the unique circumstance of production and motivation, and argues whether the fashionability of hair emerged by artists’ challenging of rules about the canonical concept of female beauty.