Concepts of Beauty:

Key Concepts:

Any concept of women prior to the 17th c. as living in some “natural” world where beauty was achievable by more than a small cadre of women who got the jackpot on the genetic lottery need to be put aside now.

• Depilatory recipes that make Nair look gentle
• The desired spouse (the only legitimate sexual outlet) is virginal, because you are guaranteed to be the father of any children.  Therefore, youth and innocence are the physical attributes that were desired.
• Beauty is ALWAYS attainable by only a small minority in any population, this era is no different.  

Botticelli, 1484

Beauty and health are automatically interrelated, if you are healthy; your skin looks good, your hair looks good and your figure looks good.  Much of the material discussed in this class came out of medical texts, until the later period when you begin to see cosmetics and medicine separated out, however, there remained significant overlap, and information for the public dealing with health and beauty continued to be published in the same texts.. 

The earliest resources are health focused, in Latin, and directed to an educated audience.  As you move through the 15^th, 16^th and early 17^th century, you see the secreti develop, books of secrets with a more technical democratized target audience.  Also with the mindset of a salesman, selling an ideal.

Theoretical Basis to Health and Beauty: 

The Humors 

Humour	Element	Elements	Description	Characteristics
Blood	air	warm & moist	sanguine	courageous, hopeful, amorous
Yellow bile	fire	warm & dry	choleric	easily angered, bad tempered
Black bile	earth	cold & dry	melancholic	despondent, sleepless, irritable
Phlegm	water	cold & moist	phlegmatic	calm, unemotional

Thank you Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism

First introduced as related to health by Hippocrates (5^th-4^th c. BCE) and re-emphasized by Galen (2^nd-3^rd c. CE), the theory of Humorism dominated medicine until the modern medical breakthroughs of the 19^th century.  Remained a reference in cosmetic, skin and hair care recipes, though less mentioned in the later recipes.

Mental and physical health were all associated with a balance of the humors.  An imbalance was the source of illness and emotional problems, cures were associated with returning balance, or allowing the body to recreate balance.  

Each herb, plant, stone etc. is under the influence of one or the other of the elements/humor, and the secret to curing any given illness is to understand the cause of the illness (and freckles were considered an illness in this worldview as much as they were a beauty flaw), and then introduce items controlled by the opposite element/humor so that the person’s body is once more in balance.

Sympathetic Associations
Although it wouldn’t have been referred to as magic, this theory of corresponding details comes into play in many of these recipes.  If something is X then it will pass along those properties to you. 

What is Beauty and how is it Achieved?

Hair

Hair should either be blonde, red or black, shiny, thick and long.  

Brown & grey were oddly never mentioned as acceptable colors.

Curls were good

Hair should smell sweetly

“For women hold the hair to be the greatest ornament of the body; that if that be taken away, all the beauty is gone: and they think it the more beautiful, the more yellow shining and radiant it is.” (GDP – 233)

Skin

Skin should be pale, free of blemishes (including freckles), with pink cheeks and lips.

Skin should be soft, smooth, and largely wrinkle free.

Other

Teeth should be white, and breath sweet.

Response to Beauty Practices

God made you, and you have the audacity to try to change God’s making?
Balance and health is one thing – coloring and perfruming another, but the line isn’t clear.

The 1658 translation of della Porta’s Natural Magic specifically gives instructions on how to “hide” what is being done, as well as instructions on how to find out if a woman’s appearance is natural or fake.

They KNEW these ingredients were bad for you.  It was never a great hidden secret, they just didn’t always care..

“Lead (plumbum) is cold.  It would harm a person if taken into the body in any way [and it would do this because of the cold it contains and because it is indigestible and just like the scum and refuse of other metals].” (Hildegard von Bingen, Physica – 238)  

Master Copho, who wrote around the same time as the author of the Trotula, felt that teeth of women who used lead were prone to rotting.

Resources & TimeLine (Primary Texts): 

Trotula – Compendium of Women’s Medicine – 10^th – 12^th c. – Latin

Physica – Hildegaard von Bingen – 11^th-12^th c. – Latin

Pseudo-Albertus Magnus – de Secretis Mulierum – 13^th-14^th c – Latin

Le Ménagier de Paris – The Good Wife’s Guide – 14^th c. – Old French

William Caxton – Caxtons Book of Curtesye (WC) – 15^th c. – English

Alexander Piccolomini – Raffaella:  A dialogue – 16^th c. – Italian

Alessio Piemontese – The secrets of Alexis (AP) – 16^th c. – Italian

Giambaptista della Porta – Magiae Naturalis (GDP) – 16^th c. – Italian

Unknown – Manual de Mujeres (MdM) – 16^th c. – Spanish

Isabella Cortese – Secreti di Isabella Cortese – 16^th c. – Italian

Hugh Plat – Delightes of Ladies – 17^th c. – English 

Resources & Translation (Secondary, Research Texts): 

Bell, Rudolph.  How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians, University of Chicago Press: 1999

Caxton, William.  Caxtons Book of Curtesye, Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14761

Eamon, William. Science & the Secrets of Nature,  Princeton University Press: 1994 

Greco, Gina and Chrstine Rose, trans.  The Good Wife’s Guide, Cornell  University Press: 2009

Green, Monica, trans.  The Trotula, University of Pennsylvania Press: 2002

Larsdatter, Karen (?), trans.  Selected excerpts from the Manual de Mujeres, http://www.larsdatter.com/manual.htm

Snook, Edith, Women, Reading, and the Cultural Politics of Early Modern England, Ashgate Publishing: 2005

Throop, Priscilla, trans. Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica, Healing Art’s Press: 1998

“I Feel Pretty & Period” on Academia.edu