In the poetry of the people in Italy brunettes, as we should expect, receive much commendation, though even here the blondes are preferred. When we turn to the painters and poets of Italy, and the æsthetic writers on beauty from the Renaissance onward, the admiration for fair hair is unqualified, though there is no correspondingly unanimous admiration for blue eyes. Angelico and most of the pre-Raphaelite artists usually painted their women with flaxen and light-golden hair, which often became brown with the artists of the Renaissance period. Firenzuola, in his admirable dialogue on feminine beauty, says that a woman's hair should be like gold or honey or the rays of the sun. Luigini also, in his _Libro della bella Donna_, says that hair must be golden. So also thought Petrarch and Ariosto. There is, however, no corresponding predilection among these writers for blue eyes. Firenzuola said that the eyes must be dark, though not black. Luigini said that they must be bright and black. Niphus had previously said that the eyes should be "black like those of Venus" and the skin ivory, even a little brown. He mentions that Avicenna had praised the mixed, or gray eye. In France and other northern countries the admiration for very fair hair is just as marked as in Italy, and dates back to the earliest ages of which we have a record. "Even before the thirteenth century," remarks Houdoy, in his very interesting study of feminine beauty in northern France during mediæval times, "and for men as well as for women, fair hair was an essential condition of beauty; gold is the term of comparison almost exclusively used."[159] He mentions that in the _Acta Sanctorum_ it is stated that Saint Godelive of Bruges, though otherwise beautiful, had black hair and eyebrows and was hence contemptuously called a crow. In the _Chanson de Roland_ and all the French mediæval poems the eyes are invariably _vairs_. This epithet is somewhat vague. It comes from _varius_, and signifies mixed, which Houdoy regards as showing various irradiations, the same quality which later gave rise to the term _iris_ to describe the pupillary membrane.[160] _Vair_ would thus describe not so much the color of the eye as its brilliant and sparkling quality. While Houdoy may have been correct, it still seems probable that the eye described as _vair_ was usually assumed to be "various" in color also, of the kind we commonly call gray, which is usually applied to blue eyes encircled with a ring of faintly sprinkled brown pigment. Such eyes are fairly typical of northern France and frequently beautiful. That this was the case seems to be clearly indicated by the fact that, as Houdoy himself points out, a few centuries later the _vair_ eye was regarded as _vert_, and green eyes were celebrated as the most beautiful.[161] The etymology was false, but a false etymology will hardly suffice to change an ideal. At the Renaissance Jehan Lemaire, when describing Venus as the type of