Word: spenser
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...Primavera. Vespucci may have looked like that, or she may not. Maybe she was a blond pudge like Pamela Anderson. Getting tumbled in a wave of neo-Platonic fantasizing about how outer shape mirrors inner essence--"For Soule is Forme, and doth the Bodie make," wrote the poet Spenser in 1596--may be great for the figure and complexion when court painters like Botticelli and writers like Marsilio Ficino or Angelo Poliziano are watching, but it's not so good for documentary truth. As faithful records of human appearance, these 15th and 16th century portraits of women are unreliable...