Human beauty is a multifaceted topic that combines biological, sociological and aesthetic aspects. Today's idea of ​​beauty is shaped by social influences and media, often resulting in strong youth influence and a thriving market for beauty products and aesthetic surgery. But the term beauty has existed since ancient times and has had different definitions.

In order to research the ancient ideal of beauty, statues from Greek and Roman antiquity were analyzed. These statues offer for the first time a three-dimensional representation of the human body and show the development of the aesthetic image from the Archaic to the Classical and Hellenistic periods.

The research used modern technologies such as 3D digitization and photogrammetry to measure the statues. It was necessary to include a sufficient number of statues from different museums and collections in Europe to obtain a representative sample. The results showed that there are only minor differences between ancient and modern beauty ideals based on objective measurements. Men were portrayed as muscular figures, women were idealized as feminine, rounded and fertile individuals. Only minor differences could be identified in the expression of individual body characteristics.

The work concluded that despite some minor variations, the basic ideals of beauty are timeless and based on biological and socio-cultural factors. In summary, the study shows that the definition of physical beauty, linked to the evolutionary biology definition of attractiveness, is timeless and has changed little over the centuries.

You can find UvA dissertations in the UvA-DARE database.