2023年经济学人 文艺复兴时期女性的美容史

 

    Culture

    文艺版块

    Book review

    书评

    A mirror on our times and theirs

    镜中的现代和古代

    How to be a Renaissance¹ Woman: The Untold² History of Beauty and Female Creativity. By Jill Burke.

    《文艺复兴时期女性宝典：关于美丽和女性创造力的秘史》，吉尔·伯克著。

    Three litres of blood from a healthy red-headed man “no older than 25 or 30” could fix bad skin.

    一名健康的红发男子(年龄不超过25岁或30岁)的3升血液可以修复受损皮肤。

    Eating nettles³ was a trick for rosier⁴ cheeks.

    吃荨麻是让脸颊红润的秘诀。

    A paste made from marble, wheat and bryony, a poisonous plant, could whiten skin.

    一种由大理石、小麦和泻根（一种有毒植物）制成的浆糊可以美白皮肤。

    Most beauty products in Renaissance Italy were made from ingredients that seem strange or foolhardy to modern eyes.

    意大利文艺复兴时期的大多数美容产品的原料，在现代人看来都很奇怪或过于大胆。

    But in “How to be a Renaissance Woman”, a lively new history of beauty culture in 16th- and 17th-century Italy, make-up is a tool to understand society and the female experience.

    《文艺复兴时期女性宝典》是一本关于16世纪和17世纪意大利美容文化的生动新史书，在这本书中，化妆是了解社会和女性经历的工具。

    Men controlled finance and government.

    男性控制着金融和政府。

    Women cared about their appearances because “they had to”, not because they were frivolous⁵, argues Jill Burke, a professor at the University of Edinburgh.

    爱丁堡大学教授吉尔·伯克认为，女性在意自己的外表是因为“她们不得不在意”，而不是因为她们太轻浮。

    Beauty and power intertwined: an attractive appearance offered better marriage prospects⁶ and social status.

    美貌和权力交织在一起：漂亮的外表能带来更好的婚姻和社会地位。

    Beauty products were no mere⁷ frippery.

    美容产品并非只是华而不实的东西。

    They could be both weapons and shields.

    它们既可以是武器，也可以是盾牌。

    Marriage manuals of the day recommended wife-beating, and cosmetic⁸ recipe-books shared tips on how to hide “dead blood” from blows to the face using wild mint leaves.

    当时的婚姻手册推荐殴打妻子，而美容手册则分享了如何用野生薄荷叶遮盖面部“瘀血”的小贴士。

    Giovanna de Grandis, a woman from Rome, was hung alongside four other women for selling a poison disguised as a blemish⁹ remover that killed 46 men.

    来自罗马的女子乔瓦娜·德·格兰迪斯与另外四名女子一起被绞死，原因是她出售一种伪装成祛斑霜的毒药，导致46名男子死亡。

    (Ms Burke thinks the men may have been abusing their wives.)(伯克认为，这些男子可能一直在虐待他们的妻子。)One dignitary guessed that 500 men could have been killed by de Grandis’s toxic¹⁰ mixture, their deaths mistaken for plague fatalities¹¹.

    一位政要猜测，可能有500人死于德·格兰迪斯的毒药，人们误以为他们是得了瘟疫而死亡。

    Cosmetics¹² are a big business—worth $430bn in 2022—but all too often they are dismissed as trivial.

    化妆品是一门大生意--2022年化妆品行业价值4300亿美元--但往往被认为是微不足道的。

    “What we do with our hair, face and body reflects and affects our social world,” Ms Burke argues.

    伯克认为：“我们如何对待我们的头发、脸部和身体，反映并影响了我们的社会。”

    Academic purists may balk¹³ at what they perceive as a chatty “history-lite” approach, but Ms Burke draws all her conclusions from primary sources (many of which she translated from the Italian herself).

    学术纯粹主义者可能会认为这是一本漫谈式的“轻历史”书，但伯克书中的所有结论都来自原始资料(其中许多是她自己从意大利语翻译而来的)。

    Most of her sources have not been studied in great depth before, like Giovanni Marinello’s “The Ornaments¹⁴ of Ladies”, published in Venice in 1562.

    大部分资料来源以前都没有被深入研究过，比如1562年在威尼斯出版的乔瓦尼·马里内洛的《女士的装饰品》。

    In it “women’s bodies are presented as forever-unfinished projects”, writes Ms Burke.

    伯克写道，在这本书中，“女性的身体被呈现为永远未完成的项目”。

    Marinello promised readers the kind of physique described by poets and painters, such as Titian’s female nude¹⁵ “Venus of Urbino”.

    马里内洛向读者承诺，会让她们拥有诗人和画家所描述的那种身材，比如提香的女性裸体绘画《乌尔比诺的维纳斯》。

    He offered 1,400 recipes to improve imperfections such as stretch marks (ladies would “do well” to “remove this defect after the birth and make your belly¹⁶ look like it should”); grey hair (women with “younger husbands” might be especially concerned); and extra flab (he suggested wrapping the troublesome area in wax overnight).

    马里内洛提供了1400种办法来改善不完美的地方，比如妊娠纹(如果“消除这种产后缺陷，让你的肚子看起来像它该有的样子”，那么女士们就会“过上美满生活”)，灰白头发(丈夫“年龄比自己小”的女性可能会尤其担心这个问题)，肌肉松弛(他建议晚上用蜡把松弛的地方包起来)。

    Visual culture was evolving rapidly.

    当时视觉文化发展迅速。

    The Renaissance era’s technologies—the full-length mirror and the printed book—shaped views of femininity.

    文艺复兴时代的技术--全身镜子和印刷书籍--塑造了人们对女性气质的看法。

    So too have 21st-century innovations: social media and photo-editing apps.

    21世纪的创新也有同样的影响：社交媒体和修图应用程序。

    Social-media users see Botox-smoothed features and photoshopped bodies.

    社交媒体用户看到的是打了肉毒杆菌的平滑面庞和PS过的身材。

    In the same way, argues Ms Burke, the popularity of single-point perspective and naturalism in drawing meant Renaissance women were bombarded with “endless images of newly realistic naked goddesses being churned out in sculptures, painting and prints”.

    伯克认为，以同样的方式，单点透视和自然主义在绘画中的流行，意味着文艺复兴时期的女性被“在雕塑、绘画和版画中大量涌现的新写实主义风格的无数裸体女神形象所轰炸”。

    Some women pushed back.

    一些女性予以回击。

    Blond hair was idealised in art, and bleaching¹⁷ was common.

    金发在艺术上被理想化了，给头发漂色也很常见。

    But as a teenager, the painter Giovanna Garzoni, famous for her meticulous¹⁸ flowers and insects, depicted¹⁹ herself in a self-promotional portrait as Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, with tousled brown hair.

    但以精细的花卉和昆虫画闻名的画家乔瓦娜·加尔佐尼，在青少年时期的一幅自我宣传肖像中将自己描绘成希腊太阳神阿波罗，画中的她有着一头蓬乱的棕发。

    Artemisia Gentileschi, who once proclaimed “as long as I live I will have control over my being”, painted herself with wayward strands²⁰ of black hair framing her face.

    画家阿特米希娅·津迪勒奇曾宣称“只要我活着，我的自身存在就只能由我自己掌控”，她在自画像中用随性的几缕黑发勾勒出自己的脸庞。

    In Ms Burke’s view female artists chose to present themselves like this to toy with the stereotypes²¹ that equated²² unruly dark hair with “interior imagination…melancholy creativity and a ‘masculine’ temperament”.

    在伯克看来，女性艺术家选择这样展示自己，是为了戏弄一些刻板印象，即将乱糟糟的深色头发等同于“内在想象力…...忧郁的创造力和‘男性’气质”。

    Whether with a make-up brush or a paintbrush, women wanted to control how the world would see and remember them.

    无论是拿着化妆刷还是画笔，女性都想将世界对她们的看法和记忆掌握在自己手中。

1 renaissance   

n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴

参考例句：

• The Renaissance was an epoch of unparalleled cultural achievement.文艺复兴是一个文化上取得空前成就的时代。
• The theme of the conference is renaissance Europe.大会的主题是文艺复兴时期的欧洲。

2 untold   

adj.数不清的，无数的

参考例句：

• She has done untold damage to our chances.她给我们的机遇造成了不可估量的损害。
• They suffered untold terrors in the dark and huddled together for comfort.他们遭受着黑暗中的难以言传的种种恐怖，因而只好挤在一堆互相壮胆。

3 nettles   

n.荨麻( nettle的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• I tingle where I sat in the nettles. 我坐过在荨麻上的那个部位觉得刺痛。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• This bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard. 那蔓草丛生的凄凉地方是教堂公墓。 来自辞典例句

4 rosier   

Rosieresite

参考例句：

• Rosier for an instant forgot the delicacy of his position. 罗齐尔一时间忘记了他的微妙处境。
• A meeting had immediately taken place between the Countess and Mr. Rosier. 伯爵夫人和罗齐尔先生已经搭讪上了。

5 frivolous   

adj.轻薄的；轻率的

参考例句：

• This is a frivolous way of attacking the problem.这是一种轻率敷衍的处理问题的方式。
• He spent a lot of his money on frivolous things.他在一些无聊的事上花了好多钱。

6 prospects   

n.希望，前途(恒为复数)

参考例句：

• There is a mood of pessimism in the company about future job prospects. 公司中有一种对工作前景悲观的情绪。
• They are less sanguine about the company's long-term prospects. 他们对公司的远景不那么乐观。

7 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

• That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
• It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。

8 cosmetic   

n.化妆品；adj.化妆用的；装门面的；装饰性的

参考例句：

• These changes are purely cosmetic.这些改变纯粹是装饰门面。
• Laughter is the best cosmetic,so grin and wear it!微笑是最好的化妆品，所以请尽情微笑吧！

9 blemish   

v.损害；玷污；瑕疵，缺点

参考例句：

• The slightest blemish can reduce market value.只要有一点最小的损害都会降低市场价值。
• He wasn't about to blemish that pristine record.他本不想去玷污那清白的过去。

10 toxic   

adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的

参考例句：

• The factory had accidentally released a quantity of toxic waste into the sea.这家工厂意外泄漏大量有毒废物到海中。
• There is a risk that toxic chemicals might be blasted into the atmosphere.爆炸后有毒化学物质可能会进入大气层。

11 fatalities   

n.恶性事故( fatality的名词复数 )；死亡；致命性；命运

参考例句：

• Several people were injured, but there were no fatalities. 有几个人受伤，但没有人死亡。
• The accident resulted in fatalities. 那宗意外道致多人死亡。 来自《简明英汉词典》

12 cosmetics   

n.化妆品

参考例句：

• We sell a wide range of cosmetics at a very reasonable price. 我们以公道的价格出售各种化妆品。
• Cosmetics do not always cover up the deficiencies of nature. 化妆品未能掩饰天生的缺陷。

13 balk   

n.大方木料；v.妨碍；不愿前进或从事某事

参考例句：

• We get strong indications that his agent would balk at that request.我们得到的强烈暗示是他的经纪人会回避那个要求。
• He shored up the wall with a thick balk of wood.他用一根粗大的木头把墙撑住。

14 ornaments   

n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 )；点缀；装饰品；首饰v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The shelves were chock-a-block with ornaments. 架子上堆满了装饰品。
• Playing the piano sets up resonance in those glass ornaments. 一弹钢琴那些玻璃饰物就会产生共振。 来自《简明英汉词典》

15 nude   

adj.裸体的；n.裸体者，裸体艺术品

参考例句：

• It's a painting of the Duchess of Alba in the nude.这是一幅阿尔巴公爵夫人的裸体肖像画。
• She doesn't like nude swimming.她不喜欢裸泳。

16 belly   

n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛

参考例句：

• The boss has a large belly.老板大腹便便。
• His eyes are bigger than his belly.他眼馋肚饱。

17 bleaching   

漂白法，漂白

参考例句：

• Moderately weathered rock showed more intense bleaching and fissuring in the feldspars. 中等风化岩石则是指长石有更为强烈的变白现象和裂纹现象。
• Bleaching effects are very strong and show on air photos. 退色效应非常强烈，并且反映在航空象片上。

18 meticulous   

adj.极其仔细的，一丝不苟的

参考例句：

• We'll have to handle the matter with meticulous care.这事一点不能含糊。
• She is meticulous in her presentation of facts.她介绍事实十分详细。

19 depicted   

描绘，描画( depict的过去式和过去分词 )； 描述

参考例句：

• Other animals were depicted on the periphery of the group. 其他动物在群像的外围加以修饰。
• They depicted the thrilling situation to us in great detail. 他们向我们详细地描述了那激动人心的场面。

20 strands   

n.（线、绳、金属线、毛发等的）股( strand的名词复数 )；缕；海洋、湖或河的)岸；（观点、计划、故事等的）部份v.使滞留，使搁浅( strand的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Twist a length of rope from strands of hemp. 用几股麻搓成了一段绳子。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She laced strands into a braid. 她把几股线编织成一根穗带。 来自《简明英汉词典》

21 stereotypes   

n.老套，模式化的见解，有老一套固定想法的人( stereotype的名词复数 )v.把…模式化，使成陈规( stereotype的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Such jokes tend to reinforce racial stereotypes. 这样的笑话容易渲染种族偏见。
• It makes me sick to read over such stereotypes devoid of content. 这种空洞无物的八股调，我看了就讨厌。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

22 equated   

adj.换算的v.认为某事物（与另一事物）相等或相仿( equate的过去式和过去分词 )；相当于；等于；把（一事物） 和（另一事物）等同看待

参考例句：

• Production costs for the movie equated to around 30% of income. 这部电影的制作成本相当于收益的30%。
• Politics cannot be equated with art. 政治不能同艺术等同起来。