Let Melita’s eyes be Juno’s, her right hand Minerva’s, Her breasts Venus’s, her calf the sea goddess’s, and so on.

Let her head come from Prague, her breasts from Austria, her belly from France, her back from Brabant, her hands from England, her feet from the Rhineland and her buttocks from Switzerland. Let her have the Spanish walk, Venetian dress, Italian courtesy and accomplishments:

Let bright eyes blaze with starry fires, Let her neck breathe roses, and gold yield to her hair; Let honeyed lips reveal a crimson blush; Let her shine and surpass Venus with her heavenly body, The beauty of all the goddesses, and so forth.

Let her be altogether such a woman as Lucian portrays in his Portraits, as Euphanor painted Venus long ago, or as Aristaenetus describes Lais: another Helen, Chariclea, Leucippe, Lucretia or Pandora. Let her have a box of beauty with which to renew herself continually, like the one Venus gave Phaon when he ferried her across the water. Let her use every aid that art and nature can supply; let her be like this woman, and that woman, and whomever you please, or all of them in one.

A little illness, a fever, smallpox, a wound, a scar, the loss of an eye or a limb, a violent passion, an imbalance of heat or cold, spoils and disfigures everything in an instant. Childbearing, old age and that tyrant time will turn Venus into a Fury. Ravaging time and care wrinkle her suddenly. After she has been married a little while and the black ox has trodden on her toe, she will be so changed and lose so much of her beauty that you will not know her.

One grows too fat, another too thin, and so on. Modest Matilda, pretty pleasing Peg, sweet-singing Susan, mincing merry Moll, dainty dancing Doll, neat Nancy, jolly Joan, nimble Nell, kissing Kate, buxom Bess with her black eyes, fair Phillis with her fine white hands, fiddling Frank, tall Tib, slender Sib, and the rest will soon lose their grace, become repellent, stale, gloomy, heavy, dull and sour, and at last all go out of fashion. “Where now are the lively expression, the sweet kisses, the winning smile?” and so on.

Those beautiful sparkling eyes will look dull; her soft coral lips will become pale, dry, cold, rough and blue; her skin will grow coarse, that soft and tender surface hard and harsh. Her entire complexion will change in a moment, as Matilda wrote to King John:

I am not now as when you saw me last; That beauty soon has vanished and is past. That rosy blush enfolded in a lily vale Is now blotched over, discoloured and pale.

So it is with the rest: their beauty fades like a tree in winter, as Deianira elegantly expresses it in the poet:

Do you see the wood, ugly with nothing but trunks? So our beauty, travelling its long road, Always loses something and shines less; Whatever we had is diminished by afflictions. What was once desired has fallen, and droops through childbirth; Motherhood has taken much of that beauty from me, And advancing age has snatched it away with hurried step.

As a tree that grows in the green wood, With fruit and leaves, and blossoms in the summer, Looks ugly as a bare trunk in the winter, So our beauty runs its course and travels on, Dwindles, loses and comes to nothing. Once admired, childbirth has brought me to this; Motherhood has robbed me of my grace, And bent old age comes quickly on.

To conclude with Chrysostom: when you see a fair and beautiful person, a splendid courtesan, a beautiful lady “who makes your mouth water,” “a charming girl whom you could easily love,” a comely woman with bright eyes, a cheerful face, a shining look and a pleasing grace, wrenching your soul and increasing your lust, consider that what you love is only earth. It is mere excrement that so torments you and that you so admire; then your raging soul will find rest. Remove the skin from her face and you will see every kind of foulness beneath it: that beauty is a surface of skin, bones, nerves and sinews. Imagine her ill, now wrinkled, grey-haired, hollow-cheeked and old. Within, she is full of filthy phlegm, stinking, putrid, excremental matter: mucus and snot in her nostrils, spittle in her mouth, water in her eyes—what filth in her brain!—and so forth.

Or take her at her best and examine her closely in the light. Stand nearer, nearer still: you will notice almost as much and love less, as Cardan aptly writes, “Those who see sharply love less,” though Scaliger mocks him for it.

If someone sees her at close range or studies her in such a posture, whoever he is, by the true rules of symmetry and proportion—I mean those of Albrecht Dürer, Lomazzo and Taisnier—question him about her. If he is “a discriminating observer of forms,” he will find many faults in her features and defects of colour; in her shape, perhaps one side of the face larger than the other, or a crooked nose, bad eyes, prominent veins, hollows around the eyes, wrinkles, pimples, red streaks, freckles, hairs, warts, moles, unevenness, roughness, scabbiness, pallor, yellowness and as many colours as on a turkey’s neck, with many unseemly features in the other parts. “There is something you would wish added, something you would cut away.” One leers, another frowns, a third gapes or squints, and so on.

And what he says is true: “To the careful observer, a perfect face, free from fault, is rare.” Seldom will you find a faultless face, as I have often observed. This defect or disproportion appears throughout body and mind, not in the face alone. She is beautiful, certainly, but foolish; pretty, comely and seemly, with a majestic presence, but perhaps domineering, unchaste, “harsh and unjust,” self-willed. She is rich but deformed; has a sweet face but bad manners, no upbringing, a rude, wanton hussy. She has a trim body, but otherwise she is a filthy wench, a complete slattern of a bad sort.