Masterpieces and Beauties. An Art Tour with a Focus on Beauty

How does the most beautiful woman look? For an artist, who has to paint the goddess of love Aphrodite or Helen of Troy, this is more than just an idle question. Such a painting would be viewed by people of different tastes, and it is important to persuade at least the majority that this is exactly what true beauty looks like. Since it was artists who spent centuries looking for a persuasive formula of female beauty, museums are the best places to track the aspects of appearance that people have always paid attention to and those that changed from one era to another. During this tour, we will discuss the criteria of beauty that are considered to be important nowadays.

Seeing canvases by Paris Bordone and Palma Vecchio, we will try to find out why women prefer to dye their hair blond rather than black. The ladies looking at us from the paintings by Peter Paul Rubens will offer us an occasion to discuss the pros and cons of curvaceousness.

We will note the use of the golden ratio principle in the canvases of old masters and discuss the rationale for tabooing the use of cosmetic products reflected in the Baroque art.

At the beginning of our art tour, you will participate in a few short questionnaires that help researchers determine the evolutionary and cultural preconditions of our preferences. The answers you give will also help you better understand what you are going to see in the museum.

During our tour, we are unlikely to find a definitive answer to “How does the most beautiful woman look?” However, if you have a dialogue with the paintings (and the scientific data), you will surely learn many new things about art, history, and, quite possibly, yourself.