She must be of medium height and slender.  Her hair must be fair, like gold; long, bright, and curly; a man’s must only reach to his shoulders.  Dark hair is seldom mentioned and was not admired.  The parting of the hair must be white, but not too broad.  The forehead must be white and bright and rounded, without wrinkles.  The eyebrows must be darker than the hair, arched, and not too broad, as though drawn with a pencil, the space between them not too broad.  The eyes must be bright, clear, and sparkling, not too large or too small; nothing definite was said of the color, but they were evidently usually blue.  The nose must be of medium size, straight, and not curved.  The cheeks must be white, tinged with red; if the red was absent by nature women used rouge.  The mouth must be small; the lips full and red.  The teeth must be small, white, and even.  The chin must be white, rounded, lovable, dimpled; the ears small and beautiful; the neck of medium size, soft, white, and spotless; the arm small; the hands and fingers long; the joints small, the nails white and bright and well cared for.  The bosom must be white and large; the breasts high and rounded, like apples or pears, small and soft.  The body generally must be slender and active.  The lower parts of the body are very seldom mentioned, and many poets are even too modest to mention the breasts.  The buttocks must be rounded, one poet, indeed, mentions, and the thighs soft and white, the meinel (mons) brown.  The legs must be straight and narrow, the calves full, the feet small and narrow, with high instep.  The color of the skin generally must be clear and of a tempered rosiness. (A.  Schultz, Quid de Perfecta Corporis Humani Pulchritudine Germani Soeculi XII et XIII Senserint, 1866.) A somewhat similar, but shorter, account is given by K. Weinhold (Die Deutschen Frauen im Mittelalter, 1882, bd. 1, pp. 219 et seq.).  Weinhold considers that, like the French, the Germans admired the mixed eye, vair or gray.

Adam de la Halle, the Artois trouvere of the thirteenth century, in a piece ("Li Jus Adan ou de la feuillie”) in which he brings himself forward, thus describes his mistress:  “Her hair had the brilliance of gold, and was twisted into rebellious curls.  Her forehead was very regular, white, and smooth; her eyebrows, delicate and even, were two brown arches, which seemed traced with a brush.  Her eyes, bright and well cut, seemed to me vairs and full of caresses; they were large beneath, and their lids like little sickles, adorned by twin folds, veiled or revealed at her will her loving gaze.  Between her eyes descended the pipe of her nose, straight and beautiful, mobile when she was gay; on either side were her rounded, white cheeks, on which laughter impressed two dimples, and which one could see blushing beneath her veil.  Beneath the nose opened a mouth with blossoming lips; this mouth, fresh and vermilion as a rose, revealed the