To Show or Not to Show? The Representation of Female Pubic Hair in the Cinquecento

• In Event: The Human Stain: Indecency and De-Idealization of the Body II

Abstract

In the Italian Renaissance the representation of pubic hair was generally omitted. This may actually be linked to social perceptions of the female body. As has recently been shown, female depilation was a topic in Italian treatises from the sixteenth century and the motivations for this oscillated between conceptions of the aesthetics, hygiene, and medical aspects of female pubic hair. The depilated female body was therefore considered the norm in representing a female nude. This raises the question: was deviation from the norm (i.e. the representation of pubic hair), necessarily considered ignoble or indecent, or can it be understood other depending on the context? In analyzing the very few representations of female pubic hair in the Italian Cinquecento, e.g. in a print of Marcantonio Raimondi, this paper would like to draw attention to the notion of decency in picturing the female nude.

Author

• Mandy Richter, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut