Beauty is considered a matter of taste—yet what people have found beautiful has changed significantly throughout history. Using visual examples from prehistory, antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the modern era, the ideals of beauty and how they have evolved will be explored: What was considered to be beautiful in a person, which notions remained constant, and how can such constants be interpreted? At the same time, a fundamental question arises: Can we even tell from images that are hundreds or thousands of years old what beauty meant in those respective eras?