Feminine beauty has been more discussed, appreciated, represented
in art and associated with national, cultural identity in Italy
than in any other country. From the time of Dante and Petrarch,
ideals of beauty have informed the works of artists, including
Botticelli, Leonardo and Titian. The modern connection between the
country and beauty dates from the Grand Tour. In the early
nineteenth century, the Romantics developed the stereotype of the
dark, passionate, natural woman, which was subsequently
appropriated as a symbol by Italian nationalists. Over the
following century and a half, Radicals, monarchists, Catholics,
Fascists, Communists and others all championed specific ideas about
female beauty, seeking to use them to condition the national
culture. This intriguing study investigates the debates and
conflicts the issue provoked. Gundle examines the role of peasant
beauty in symbolising the failed hopes of the Risorgimento, and the
annexation of this by the establishment in the late nineteenth
century; Fascism's failure to mould the ideal modern Italian woman;
the politicization of beauty pageants after the Second World War;
the symbolic role of film and television stars; and the controversy
over the election of the first non-white Miss Italy in 1996.
Although the public discussion of feminine beauty was largely a
male affair, the women who were caught up in it, and who were seen,
on account of their beauty, to embody the nation, were never
passive objects. Indeed, they often used or manipulated the
tradition of beauty for their own ends. This book explores these
issues through the careers and public images of numerous prominent
women including Queen Margherita of Savoy, the opera singer Lina
Cavalieri, and the film stars Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren,
Claudia Cardinale and Monica Bellucci. Stephen Gundle is Professor
of Film and Television Studies at Warwick University. He is the
author of 'Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and
the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943-91' and co-author of 'The
Glamour System' and 'Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism
to the Cold War'.
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