Giovan Battista Della Porta’s Natural Magic (1589) offers a comprehensive exploration of the intersections between beauty and health. It reflects the period’s beliefs about the healing properties of natural substances and their use in enhancing physical appearance. The article will demonstrate how Natural Magic delineates health and beauty practices along gender lines, explicitly distinguishing between general distillation methods and specific beauty treatments for women. In doing so, it constructs gender-specific roles and applications for otherwise neutral recipes.
University of Salzburg, Austria - ORCID: 0000-0003-3190-075X
University of Salzburg, Austria - ORCID: 0009-0003-1445-8944
Titolo del capitolo
Health and Beauty in Della Porta’s Natural Magic
Autori
Romana Sammern, Sabrina Jocher
Lingua
Inglese
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0836-9.07
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2025
Copyright
© 2025 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Titolo del libro
Hunting Secrets
Sottotitolo del libro
Giovan Battista Della Porta and the Invention of Experimental Magic
Curatori
Donato Verardi
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Numero di pagine
168
Anno di pubblicazione
2025
Copyright
© 2025 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Editore
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0836-9
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0835-2
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0836-9
eISBN (epub)
979-12-215-0837-6
Collana
Knowledge and its Histories
ISSN della collana
3035-5974
e-ISSN della collana
3035-5923