Hair and make up of the Rennaisance

Hair styles and make-up have been a significant part of the culture for centuries. It has been changing with every era, decade or style of art. The difference can be as small as a change of a shape of the eyeliner or it can be a complete change of people’s looks. What was considered beautiful in Renaissance was absolutely outdated 100 years after this era. In this essay I will be talking about the hair and make-up in Renaissance. It all started in Italy, home of the greatest artists of the time. The first section of my essay will be about Italy and the way people were changing their natural appearances using various products. In the second section I will move to the north of Europe to explore a bit more about this topic and see how much the fashion that was set in Italy has changed. In the third section I will look at what was going on in the Great Britain and compare the Elizabethan hair and make-up to the continental style.

Italy has always been a cultural capital, at least in the eyes of people who have taught me history and art. Majestic buildings, amazing paintings, impressive statues – that is just a fraction of what was created in Italy. Renaissance is a unique era, after the Gothic art strictly controlled by the Christian Church; people are turning their eyes away from the God and the God alone to themselves as well. Leonardo Da Vinci is studying anatomy and people are trying to look their best. Portraits of real people come back after years and years of portraying the God and emperors. That didn’t mean that people were satisfied with their natural looks and they tried to make themselves look better; however, applying rouges and other forms of make-up was supposed to only enhance one’s natural beauty1. If I look at the tr...

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...halfway Gothic style, but it is really nice to see the transition. The woman’s skin is very pale, she has most likely used one of the dangerous substances popular in Italy to make herself look this way. The rest of the look is very nude, no eye make-up or rouge is visible. Her eyebrows are also lighter than her hair. Some sources suggest, the eyebrows in the Renaissance were plucked out completely. The eyelashes were ideally short and sparse.

In another northern European portrait by Jan Van Eyck we can see a man. This portrait proves that men had lots of freedom when it came to deciding on their facial hair. In the pictures above we can see a man with a full beard, a group of men with pointy goatees and this painting portrays a clean shaven man. His eyebrows are sparse as well and this portrait also demonstrates that turbans and head covers were not for women only.