“Who seems most hideous when adorned the most.”

—  Ludovico Ariosto , book Orlando Furioso

Che quant' era più ornata, era più brutta.
Canto XX, stanza 116 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Compare:
Beauty when most unclothed is clothed best.
Phineas Fletcher, Sicelides (1614), Act II, scene iv
In naked beauty more adorned,
More lovely than Pandora.
John Milton, Paradise Lost (1674), Book IV, line 713
For Loveliness
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
But is, when unadorned, adorned the most.
James Thomson, The Seasons, "Autumn" (1730), line 204
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Original

Che quant' era più ornata, era più brutta.

Orlando Furioso (1532)

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Ludovico Ariosto 97
Italian poet 1474–1533

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