WOMEN THROUGH THE AGES
Around 1859 a series of fashion-
questions. Does a beautiful face
plates from the late eighteenth century inspired Charles Baudelaire to contemplate beauty and to write
reflect a beautiful character? Is there a relation between beauty and desire? How is beauty, real and ideal, depicted
arguably his most famous essay. In The Painter of Modern Life the
and constructed in art and what is the connection between painting the face
poet argued that ›the idea of beauty which man creates for himself‹ did not only imprint itself on clothes but
and fixing a likeness onto a canvas.
›in the long run even ends by subtly penetrating the very features of his
›Il faut suffrir pour être belle‹. My grandmother’s claim that you had to
face.‹ Baudelaire believed that beauty was made up of two parts: an invariable element that is eternal and a ›relative, circumstantial element‹ that differs in various periods.
Reading the introduction, I was struck by a sentence I used to hear very often:
suffer to become beautiful has stayed with me, although she did not address it to my six-year-old self, but rather to her beloved poodle who very much disliked being groomed. While I do not
The interaction between, and disentangling of, universal and period
think suffering is the right word for the mild pain and occasional boredom
specific notions of beauty is also a
I myself might have endured seeking
recurrent theme of Aileen Ribeiro’s lavishly illustrated and elegantly designed book Facing Beauty: Painted Women and Cosmetic Art. Ribeiro does not only provide a beautifully
facial enhancement, until the end of the nineteenth century many women would have been all too aware of the truth of this old saying.
written, comprehensive history of the ›enhancement or creation of beauty by cosmetics‹ from the Renaissance to the Second World War, she also discusses much more wide-ranging
ingredients of beautifying products were seriously harmful. The most notorious, ceruse, was made by exposing lead plates to the vapour of
As Ribeiro shows, many of the
Issue 11 | February 2014
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