Abstract:
Early modern cosmetics have recently attracted burgeoning interest from scholars, but existing approaches have resulted in a rather disjunctive field of scholarship on early modern women’s beauty practices. Although Catherine Lanoë and Edith Snook have produced compelling analyses in their respective domains of French and English early modern cosmetics, the potential of comparative studies of early modern European beauty ideals and practices has been ignored, despite clear evidence of intimate connections between, and transmission of ideas across, European societies. And, while books of secrets’ cosmetic recipes have been consulted and referenced by many scholars, few have thoroughly mined these primary resources to uncover the wealth of invaluable information they contain on early modern women’s beauty ideals and practices. This thesis, a comparative study of the beauty cultures of sixteenth-century Italy and France, provides a much needed cross-cultural analysis. Close analysis of cosmetic recipes relating to four corporeal elements of women’s beauty – hair, skin, hands and teeth – will foster a better understanding of the practices employed by women in the quest for beauty and the reasons behind them. These primary resources, knitted together with theoretical writing on female beauty, artistic depictions of women and extant beauty tools, demonstrate the flourishing beauty cultures in sixteenth-century Italy and France. Along with comparing and contrasting these beauty cultures, the transmission of beauty practices will also be evidenced and explored, signalling the opportunity for further cross-cultural studies in the domains of early modern beauty and cosmetics.