Natural Beauty – Ideals and Realities of Beauty in Late Byzantium, lecture by Kirsty Stewart, King’s College London, February 27, 2018, 5:30–7:00 pm

The heroines of later Byzantine romances are described with naturalistic imagery; often having snow or crystal-like skin, cheeks the colour of roses and golden hair. Particularly in the Palaiologan works, they are directly connected with gardens and the trees, plants and ornamentation within them. These female characters are clearly representations of ideal women; young, aristocratic and beautiful. This paper will discuss some of the common elements of the depictions of women’s appearance in late Byzantium, considering textual and visual evidence, before discussing the cosmetic and medical products which they may have used to achieve the ideal appearance, and the natural ingredients used to create them. In doing so the paper will examine ideas of gender, status in relation to the practical artifice of beauty.

Kirsty Stewart completed her DPhil at Oxford in 2016, taking an ecocritical approach to Palaiologan vernacular literature. She has published articles on literary representations animals and women in the Byzantine romances, and is currently writing on theological naturalism and the social history of nature.