When dressed her appearance is beautiful; when undressed she is all beauty.  Her walk is composed and slow; she looks like a cypress or a palm stirred by the wind.  I cannot describe how the swelling, symmetrical breasts raise the constraining vest, nor how delicate and supple her limbs are.  And when she speaks, what sweetness in her discourse!”

Renier has studied the feminine ideal of the Provencal poets, the troubadours who used the “langue d’oc.”  “They avoid any description of the feminine type.  The indications refer in great part to the slender, erect, fresh appearance of the body, and to the white and rosy coloring.  After the person generally, the eyes receive most praise; they are sweet, amorous, clear, smiling, and bright.  The color is never mentioned.  The mouth is laughing, and vermilion, and, smiling sweetly, it reveals the white teeth and calls for the delights of the kiss.  The face is clear and fresh, the hand white and the hair constantly blonde.  The troubadours seldom speak of the rest of the body.  Peire Vidal is an exception, and his reference to the well-raised breasts may be placed beside a reference by Bertran de Born.  The general impression conveyed by the love lyrics of the langue d’oc is one of great convention.  There seemed to be no salvation outside certain phrases and epithets.  The woman of Provence, sung by hundreds of poets, seems to have been composed all of milk and roses, a blonde Nuremburg doll.” (R.  Renier, Il Tipo Estetico della Donna nel Medioevo, 1885, pp. 1-24.)

The conventional ideal of the troubadours is, again, thus described:  “She is a lady whose skin is white as milk, whiter than the driven snow, of peculiar purity in whiteness.  Her cheeks, on which vermilion hues alone appear, are like the rosebud in spring, when it has not yet opened to the full.  Her hair, which is nearly always bedecked and adorned with flowers, is invariably of the color of flax, as soft as silk, and shimmering with a sheen of the finest gold.” (J.F.  Rowbotham, The Troubadours and Courts of Love, p. 228.)

In the most ancient Spanish romances, Renier remarks, the definite indications of physical beauty are slight.  The hair is “of pure gold,” or simply fair (rudios, which is equal to blondos, a word of later introduction), the face white and rosy, the hand soft, white, and fragrant; in one place we find a reference to the uncovered breasts, whiter than crystal.  But usually the ancient Castilian romances do not deal with these details.  The poet contents himself with the statement that a lady is the sweetest woman in the world, “la mas linda mujer del mundo.” (R.  Renier, Il Tipo Estetico della Donna nel Medioevo, pp. 68 et seq.)

In a detailed and well-documented thesis, Alwin Schultz describes the characteristics of the beautiful woman as she appealed to the German authors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.