Abstract

Working in collaboration with others, Agostino Veneziano produced three remarkable prints representing nude women seated or standing beside spectacular allantica vases and set before ruinous landscapes. This article investigates the authorship and origin of these unusual images. It suggests that the vases are presented as a metaphor for female beauty, and relates the visual rhetoric of these three prints to the writings of contemporary writers, including Agnolo Firenzuola, who described the beauty of women in relation to the elegant proportions of such vases.