The visual arts in Italian

Estetico closes this list and looks like the safest word on it. In the phrase it is given — il giudizio estetico — it is indeed « aesthetic », and a sentence about taste crosses over unchanged. Step outside the museum, though, and the Italian adjective does a second job that « aesthetic » has never done in English: it is the ordinary word of the beauty trade. Un centro estetico is a beauty salon, i trattamenti estetici are beauty treatments, la chirurgia estetica is cosmetic surgery, and l’estetista is the beautician, a trained occupation and not a philosopher. English keeps the two apart by means of a second word, « cosmetic », which is why « aesthetic surgery » sounds like a slip and « cosmetic judgement » says something quite different from il giudizio estetico. The consequence runs the other way as well: una modifica estetica to a building or to a report is a cosmetic change, one that alters nothing underneath, and reading « aesthetic » there turns a dismissal into a compliment.