when it shows the definitely feminine and rolling character, with the greatest predominance of the moment of extension over that of flexion.” (Stratz, Die Schoenheit des Weiblichen Koerpers, fourteenth edition, p. 275.)

An occasional development of the idea of sexual beauty as associated with developed hips is found in the tendency to regard the pregnant woman as the most beautiful type.  Stratz observes that a woman artist once remarked to him that since motherhood is the final aim of woman, and a woman reaches her full flowering period in pregnancy, she ought to be most beautiful when pregnant.  This is so, Stratz replied, if the period of her full physical bloom chances to correspond with the early months of pregnancy, for with the onset of pregnancy metabolism is heightened, the tissues become active, the tone of the skin softer and brighter, the breasts firmer, so that the charm of fullest bloom is increased until the moment when the expansion of the womb begins to destroy the harmony of the form.  At one period of European culture, however,—­at a moment and among a people not very sensitive to the most exquisite aesthetic sensations,—­the ideal of beauty has even involved the character of advanced pregnancy.  In northern Europe during the centuries immediately preceding the Renaissance the ideal of beauty, as we may see by the pictures of the time, was a pregnant woman, with protuberant abdomen and body more or less extended backward.  This is notably apparent in the work of the Van Eycks:  in the Eve in the Brussels Gallery; in the wife of Arnolfini in the highly finished portrait group in the National Gallery; even the virgins in the great masterpiece of the Van Eycks in the Cathedral at Ghent assume the type of the pregnant woman.

“Through all the middle ages down to Duerer and Cranach,” quite truly remarks Laura Marholm (as quoted by I. Bloch, Beitraege zur AEtiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil I, p. 154), “we find a very peculiar type which has falsely been regarded as one of merely ascetic character.  It represents quiet, peaceful, and cheerful faces, full of innocence; tall, slender, young figures; the shoulders still scanty; the breasts small, with slender legs beneath their garments; and round the upper part of the body clothing that is tight almost to the point of constriction.  The waist comes just under the bosom, and from this point the broad skirts in folds give to the most feminine part of the feminine body full and absolutely unhampered power of movement and expansion.  The womanly belly even in saints and virgins is very pronounced in the carriage of the body and clearly protuberant beneath the clothing.  It is the maternal function, in sacred and profane figures alike, which marks the whole type—­indeed, the whole conception—­of woman.”  For a brief period this fashion reappeared in the eighteenth century, and women wore pads and other devices to increase the size of the abdomen.