Skip to contentSkip to site index

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

nonfiction

16th-Century Beauty Secrets, Revealed

In “How to Be a Renaissance Woman,” the historian Jill Burke explores the aesthetic expectations of an era — and just how they were achieved. (Recipes included.)

A Renaissance oil painting portrays a noblewoman in a low-necked red velvet dress with large puffed sleeves, worn over a sheer muslin tucker trimmed with gold braid and pearls, the dress embellished with a twisted gold belt trailing chains of jet beads. She also wears a long necklace of large pearls, a jeweled ring and an elaborate headdress of gold and jewels, with a pearl, emerald and ruby brooch at its center. Her brown hair is parted in the middle and tightly curled into ringlets. Her complexion is pale, and her cheeks pink. Her brows are thin.
For women of the Italian Renaissance, writes the academic Jill Burke, elaborate beauty regimens were not only an expectation but a rare area of agency.Credit...Peter Paul Rubens, via Vienna Art History Museum

By Marisa Meltzer

Marisa Meltzer is the author of “Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’s Glossier.”

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.

HOW TO BE A RENAISSANCE WOMAN: The Untold History of Beauty & Female Creativity, by Jill Burke

Shapewear. Stretch mark remedies. Nose jobs. Eyebrow shaping. These things are not just preoccupations of ours, but also concerned the women of the Renaissance.

In “How to Be a Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty & Female Creativity,” Jill Burke, a professor of Renaissance studies at the University of Edinburgh, brings us a breezy and readable portrait of 16th-century Italy through the lens of beauty standards and practices.

Image

One source that inspired the book was Giovanni Marinello’s “The Ornaments of Ladies,” first published in Venice in 1562, which included 1,400 recipes for face, hair and body. Burke does some of her own translations from Italian and even adapts recipes for those readers interested in trying out their own distilled broad-bean flower water.

The 16th century, Burke notes, is a time, like the one we are living through now, when technology and visual culture collided. Developments in single-point perspective, draftsmanship and anatomy all influenced portraiture. And body ideals were changing from the gothic paragon, with narrow shoulders and big hips, to soft hourglasses, preferably complete with pale skin and golden curls.

There are plenty of noblewomen in these pages — their stories are usually the best documented — but Burke makes an effort to talk about women of many kinds: domestic help, peasants, widows, courtesans and all manner of sex workers. (The names mentioned also function as a great source for anyone in your life looking for a memorable and uncommon baby moniker. Consider Tullia, Lucrezia, Moderata, Isotta!)

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT