The origins of plastic surgery: practice and standards of
female beauty in the Libri dei segreti and treatises of the sixteenth century
A wide range of Libri dei segreti and treatises on female beauty and
behaviour produced during the XVI century provide accounts regarding
physical alterations, cosmetic treatment and behavioural rules which challenged
conventional views. These sources open up important paths of inquiry and
understanding for anyone concerned with the perception of both female
body and behaviour in daily life in sixteenth-century Italy. It is through these
texts that we can begin to develop a fuller picture of the prominence given to
physical beauty and its connection with the practises that aim to make the body
beautiful following the canons of that time. Passages which deal with female
beauty and behaviour indicate the different ways in which social conventions
and rigid prescriptions contribute to the construction and display of the ideal
female body.