Men and women with long hair or crudely shaved heads; wise, old men with thick white manes and conceited hags wearing wigs; shameless women who let their curls flow in the wind and rebellious girls who cut them off and pretend to be men. Grabbed by your hair, you can take flight or be pulled out of the water; jealous husbands drag their wives by their tresses. The merciful Queen Radegund washed and combed paupers’ hair. Petrarch is said to have devoted exceptionally high levels of care to his locks. In the Middle Ages, hair – be it blond or dark, well-groomed, or neglected, natural or styled – distinguished the poor from the rich, the good from the bad, the neighbour from the stranger, the layman from the cleric, the honest woman from the dissolute, the virgin from the wife, the vain from the humble. The central focus of ordinary and extraordinary gestures, hair has always reflected its social and environmental context. This book rediscovers hair as an unexpectedly key topic in real and invented tales, handed down through time by literature and art.

Virtus Zallot teaches History of Medieval Art and Art Pedagogy at the Santa Giulia Fine Arts Academy in Brescia.