The use of cosmetics or make-up was frowned upon at some points in history. However make-up also had a practical use to hide the scarring of various diseases such as smallpox.
Perfumes were popular together with the use of creams and unguents to soften the skin. These were made from ingredients such as using honey, beeswax and sesame seed oil.
During the Crusades, Europe was introduced to the cosmetic products used in the Middle East. Perfumes were popular and produced from flowers such as roses, water lilies and violets.
The eye make-up used in the Middle East concentrated in providing colour to their eye lashes, eye lids and eye brows.
A type of rouge made from red ochre was used to stain their lips and cheeks and a form of henna was used to paint their nails and colour their hair.
Queen Elizabeth I set the fashions and as she grew older she more wore elaborate make-up which was useful for hiding wrinkles and other signs of ageing.
Queen Elizabeth had contracted small pox which had left some slight scarring on her face. As she grew older the heavy white make-up which she favoured helped to hide this and maintain her illusion of beauty and image as the 'Virgin Queen'.
Queen Elizabeth did have the natural attributes of this ideal image of beauty but she enhanced and exaggerated the image by using white make-up. This explains the odd white face make-up seen in many of her portraits. The favoured application of the upper classes was a make-up called ceruse which was a mixture of white lead and vinegar. Unfortunately was poisonous. The acquisition of a pale complexion was so desirable that rich Tudor women were bled to achieve the desired pale look. Face paint made from plant roots and leaves was also applied. The look was completed with an application of an expensive rouge made from cochineal (a scarlet dye used for colouring food, made from the crushed dried bodies of a female scale insect) to stain the cheeks and the lips. Madder (A red dye obtained from these roots) and vermilion (A brilliant red pigment made from mercury sulphide (cinnabar) was also used to achieve this reddening effect). Kohl was used to darken the eyelashes, another element of make-up which was imported from the Middle East during the crusades.
Rich Tudor women followed the fashion of light hair dyed their hair yellow. The yellow hair dye was made from a mixture of saffron, cumin seed, celandine and oil. Wigs and hairpieces were also popular and Queen Elizabeth I had a wide variety of wigs, periwigs and hair pieces which numbered over eighty.
To make the hands and face
white:
Take leaves and roots of nettle
and boil them in water and with this water wash your hands and face and they
will become white and soft.
To
cure redness of the face:
Take white lead [ceruse], rose
water and violet oil and mix together and anoint the face.
To
keep the teeth tight in the jaw:
Take a cup of plantain water
and boil in it these things: tragacanth putty, 1 on. rock alum, and make very
fine powder out of all these and Boil them for half an hour in said water and
with said water wash the gums frequently.
To
seal the teeth:
Take fresh olive leaves and
make a juice from them, then the same amount of onion juice and mix together,
and put in an ampolla and put in the sun for 4 days, then Bathe and rub the
teeth they will seal well.
To make powder to make teeth white:
Take coral and rock alum burned
and ground very well and pass through a sieve and use.
A lot of these products/ingredients to make the cosmetics were dangerous as they probably didn't know the dangers of them or what they could do to them which just goes to show that not many people really cared about the consequences of these products and just wanted to look like queen Elizabeth whether it meant harming or damaging their skin.
Reading through the types of things they used as ingredients to make cosmetics and not knowing what half of them are shows how they used random things to make them look more 'elizabethan' as everyone looked up to her which in a way wasn't good as it meant people used harmful recipes to make their own cosmetics to get pure white skin or rouge lips.
References;
Cosmetics recipes (2012) Available at: https://sites.eca.ed.ac.uk/renaissancecosmetics/cosmetics-recipes/ (Accessed: 10 December 2015).
