Summary of Scott Belsky's The Messy Middle

Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.

Sample Book Insights:

#1 The most famous artistic expressions of female beauty during the High Renaissance derived from northern and western Italy and the Low Countries. The major cities in these regions simultaneously served as key ports of the expanding slave trade.

#2 The growing population of African women as slaves and domestic servants in northern and western Europe between 1490 and 1590 led to the inclusion of black women into the definition of perfect female beauty.

#3 The artist Durer was interested in the contours of human beauty, and he believed that the perfection of form and beauty was found in the sum of all men. He believed that the task of the portraitist was to identify the big differences between the various nations of mankind.

#4 Dürer’s views on the beauty of the African body were based on the prevailing judgments of tastes. These values, which were created by elites, placed qualities symbolizing refinement atop the aesthetic hierarchy.