The Renaissance

Renaissance Makeup: The Ideal Face and What It Cost

A period that theorised beauty, wrote its recipes down, and pursued a complexion that was quietly poisoning the people who achieved it.

The essayThe Ideal Face and What It Cost

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1400 – 1700Art & Ideal Beauty

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The Renaissance: The Chronology

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1400
The Written Recipe: When a Formula Became a Possession
The recipe stopped being a line inside somebody else’s medical book and became a thing worth owning in its own right.
1500
The Experimenti: Caterina Sforza’s Working Notebook
A collection in which cosmetics, medicine and alchemy sit on the same page, assembled by somebody with no interest in keeping them apart.
1550
Venetian Ceruse: The Most Expensive Way to Damage a Face
The luxury complexion of early modern Europe was a lead compound, and its worst property was also its best selling point.
1600
Painted Portraits, Painted Faces: Reading an Ideal Off a Panel
Almost everything said about Renaissance complexions is read off portraits, and a portrait is the last thing that should be trusted about a face.
1688
The Ideal Exported: How a Court Face Became a European One
A standard of appearance travelled across Europe before any product did, carried by the people with a reason to copy a court.

In short

The Renaissance turned cosmetics into a written technical literature: recipe collections such as Caterina Sforza’s Experimenti circulated as serious knowledge, even as the period’s most prized complexion product, lead-based Venetian ceruse, damaged the skin it was applied to.

The Renaissance at a Glance

Luminous PallorA high, unblemished white was the whole complexion ideal.
Venetian CeruseLead white — the most admired and most damaging product of the age.
Recipes in PrintCosmetic knowledge becomes a written, circulating literature.
Painted EvidencePortraits show the ideal, not necessarily the face.

In the Renaissance

Art & Ideal Beauty

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