Journalist and writer Carlo Avvisati has edited the Neapolitan translation of “Medicamina faciei femineae” (The Art of Makeup) by Publio Ovidio Naso, a small treatise in verse considered an ancient tutorial on the home preparation of cosmetics and the art of makeup. Enriched by the presentation of Stefano De Caro and the preface of Pietro Gargano comes the book “Ll'arte 'e se pittà” (64 pages at the price of 5 euros) published by Arte'm.
Ovid wrote this treatise about two thousand years ago and it has reached us incomplete and fragmentary. The transposition into verse by Avvisati has a Latin and Italian text with the Neapolitan translation opposite and can be considered a small vademecum on the vices, culture and virtues of the good society of the time. In this treatise we can see a transgressive and unconventional side of Ovid, as well as extremely modern for the times, which challenges common thought by giving suggestions on how to transform the face, and offers the proportions for the development of home recipes.
Stefano De Caro explains: “from the Mycenaean world, from Egypt, from the Syro-Phoenician world, essences and recipes had arrived that profoundly influenced local cultures in the fields of cosmetics, pharmacopoeia, cooking, funerary and religious uses … the demand for perfumes … stimulated an imitation production that in turn pushed the farmers of the fertile Campanian plains to convert part of their productive capacity towards crops (oil, flowers, herbs) that effectively supplied the new industry with raw materials…”
The booklet also contains an appendix with the most famous perfumes and the squares where they could be found, from Capua to Pompeii, passing through Pozzuoli, the names of the women who remained famous for having used them (Poppea and Cleopatra, among others) and a dictionary that clarifies and makes the beauty of Neapolitan terms and expressions more understandable.
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