First of all, because I haven't got the chance to learn so much about the history of other countries in highschool, as the only deep studied history subjects were the Great World Wars and Romanians history.
And secondly, because I felt that to understand the theme of this semester I need to know something more than just how they used to do their hair and make-up.
Researching, I found that everything behind those portraits and behind the way the Elizabethans wanted to be fashionable had a deep symbolism behind, Everything was "there for a reason", everything used to express something about the people and their status, about the society and about the way they saw the world in general. I usually didn't look at portraits that way and I wasn't paying so much attention to the details, such as hairstyles and the way portrayed people's complexion looked, but now I realised how important these aspects are and how just one picture can tell us a whole story about the person that's in it.
I think that this project will have a wonderful result because I feel really inspired by the Elizabethan era, and I can't wait to research more! I have many gaps in my knowledge about England's history (and the language as well).
However, I feel really excited about this first semester even if it's going to be the toughest and I'll do my best in overcoming any problem I might encounter. I'll just let the inspiration guide me to the best outcome possible!
"Thousands of years ago, Great Britain was joined to Europe and was covered with ice. About 15,000 years ago, the weather became warmer. The ice melted and the sea level rose. Great Britain became an island about 8000 years ago.
Celtic people called Britons settles in Britain. They were warriors and farmers who were skilled metal workers. They built villages and hill forts, and used iron weapons and tools. Celts called Gaels lived in Ireland.
Chronology of events in England's history:
- Prehistoric Britain BC
- Roman Britain 43 AD
- Anglo Saxon Britain 450
- Viking Britain 793
- Medieval Britain 1066
- Tudor Britain 1485
- Stuart Britain 1603
- Georgian Britain 1714
- Victorian Britain 1837
- Modern Britain 1902 +
The Tudors were a Welsh-English family that ruled England from 1485 to 1603. They came to power as a result of the victory of Henry VII over Yorkist king Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. The Tudor dynasty ended when Henry's grand-daughter Elizabeth I died childless. The Throne passed to their cousins, the Scottish Stuarts, unifying Engalnd and Scotland.
The Tudors were Welsh. They brought peace to England after 150 years of virtually continuous warfare, encouraged new religious ideas, overseas exploration and colonisation.
Elizabeth I - the last Tudor monarch - was born at Greenwich Palace on 7 September 1533, the younger daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn.
When Elizabeth came to the throne, she was 25. She succeeded to the throne on her half-sister's death in November 1558.
Elizabeth liked hunting and enjoyed court masques (entertainment of poetry, songs and dancing). She was very well-educated and was fluent in six languages. She did not marry and was known as the Virgin Queen. Elizabeth made England Protestant again and her will was the law. During her reign, England became enemy of Catholic Spain, and Elizabeth fought against Philip II's navy (the Spanish Armada). The Tudor period ended with the death of Queen Elizabeth I on 24th March 1603 after 45 years on the throne. She had no husband or children to succeed her.
Elizabeth I's rule is remembered as the Golden Age of English history. Under her rule, England advanced in such areas as foreign trade, exploration, literature, and the arts.
During Elizabeth's reign the age of exploration began with explorers such as Francis Drake claiming new lands for England and introducing new materials and foods. The American State, Virginia, is named after her."
Here are some of my thoughts and impressions about the Elizabethan beauty rituals after doing some research:
Queen Elizabeth I was well known for her beauty rituals, her looks, her temper. She was often referred to as "the virgin queen" because she did not marry. But she wasn't always that "glamorous" queen that is presented to us in the portraits after her coronation.
When she was younger she refused to do her hair and had a very simple taste in terms of clothing and styling. Maybe that was because she was still under the control of her sister, queen Mary, who was promoting Roman Catholicism, which was a restrictive religion.
After she was crowned, she has became like a elebrity nowadays, everyone wanted to look like her and they made her the ideal of feminine beauty of the era. She was idolized by both men and women, and by women especially for how she used to do her make-up, hair, how she used to dress. As Elizabeth got older, she became obsessed with the preservation of her beauty. and promoted the use of cosmetics and make-up. She loved the appearance of her hands, and that's why she has often been portrayed with her hands showing and she used various cosmetics to keep them "young". But what people of that era didn't know was that the use of lead based cosmetics was harmful to the skin, and Elizabeth, by the age of 28, had her skin ruined. She also used to wear wigs and pieces of hair, just like extensions, because the hairstyles were really elaborated and time consuming and because as she grew older she started to lose her natural hair due to overstyling.
Gunn Fenja says, in the book "Artificial face: A history of cosmetics" that "Elizabeth's coronation on 15 January 1559 marked the beginning of a new phase of the Renaissance in England. The young queen epitomised the spirit of the age, combining scholarship, statecraft and queenly authority with feminine allure, She attracted to her court brilliant and unusual men who in every way reflected a new mode of thought. The Gothic shadow of early Tudor England ebbed away before the promise of a new brilliant future. The fashions of the day reflected this change in attitude. The ponderous magnificence of early Tudor costume dissapeared in favour of lighter padded clothes, which made use of lavish and bright coloured fabrics, exquisite embroidery and huge lace ruffs. An amalgam of these features have fashion a feminine quality.
This was certainly due to Elizabeth. It would be true to say that no single individual has ever exerted such an influence on the fashions and beauty of the period [...]. In the Queen was personified the Elizabethan ideal of beauty.
When she ascended the throne at twenty-five years of her age her natural handsomeness was beyond dispute, but the preservation of her beauty became an obsession stemming from feminine vanity and perhaps a sense of insecurity which was both political and emotional. Certainly this interest in preserving her appearance prompted Elizabeth to resort the use of ingenious cosmetic artifice.
Cosmetics had begun to be generally used by the year of her coronation."
John Guy says, in his book "The Tudors - A very short introduction", that "Elizabeth was a strong ruler with a winning, but often imperious, manner. She took a high view of her royal prerogative, and held as robust a belief in the divine right of kings as her father and successor. She had a sharp tongue and a smouldering temper. She could be vain, indecisive, and isolationist."
According to Aileen Ribeiro, in her book "Facing Beauty - Painted Women & Cosmetic Art", "Elizabeth I was the paradigm of beauty in elite English circles during the second half of the century, celebrated in verse even as an old woman, by which time she had become a kind of dazzling painted icon, depicted in her portraits from the 1580s onwards, a psyhical presence created by elaborate and patterned clothing loaded with jewellery , and a mask-like face. In a portrait attributed to the queen's Serjeant Painter George Gower of about 1588, she is shown in an amber-coloured wig (she had a vast "wardrobe" of wigs in shades of red and gold), on which is set a headdress of diamonds and pearls. Her face is painted white, the fineness of the skin emphasized by the veins on the temple, painted with woad or indigo mixed with ceruse; the eyebrows are barely visible, the cheeks tinged with pink and the lips reddened."
Gunn Fenja, in the book "Artificial face: A history of cosmetics", says that: "Her [Elizabeth's] face make-up of white powder, rouge and lip dye glazed with egg white had set the fashion for other Elizabethan women. She also plucked her eyebrows and forehead to reveal a greater expanse of white skin, a medieval habit that persisted throughout the Tudor and Elizabethan periods. To draw attention to her high plucked forehead and to simulate the translucency of a perfect white skin, Elizabeth even painted artificial veins on her brow. This quaint cosmetic device was most probably used to replace, in middle age, the natural beauty of a youthful complexion. Cosmetics and scents were imported for Elizabeth from all over the Continent and, as she grew older, she tried many lotions and elixirs that purported to preserve or recreate youth."
Elizabethans loved their queen, and they wrote poetry for her, which can be used by us nowadays to depict how she looked like:
When it comes about Elizabethans beauty ideals, having a pale complexion and a large forehead was a must have if you wanted to be seen as wealthy, noble and smart. Poor people, workers, peasants, couldn't afford keeping their skin fair because they had to work outside, in the sun, and this made their skin tanned. Back then, tanned skin, black hair, black eyebrows, was something unpleasant for a noble and wealthy lady and for men too. To emphasize the whiteness of their skin, Elizabethan women used to use cosmetics to whiten the face, bleaches to whiten the eyebrows, and they even shaved the first inch of their hairline to make their foreheads look larger. They spent a lot of time protecting themselves from the sun, using hats and scarfes, to preserve their beauty.
However, they didn't bath that often. Bath was considered harmful to the health, so they used perfumes instead. The queen had her own recipes of perfumes and cosmetics, but I'm going to talk about this topic in another post. They didn't usually wash their teeth so those who had good teeth used to be only the richer ones, but only a short amount of time. After their ruined their teeth by not cleaning them properly, they used to suck jewels because they considered that this would make their breath fresher.
According to Aileen Ribeiro, in her book "Facing Beauty - Painted Women & Cosmetic Art", "In northern Europe, the emphasis was on an almost unnaturally white skin, as can be seen in anonymous British School portrait of a young woman, of 1569, tentatively identified as a Swedish maid-of-honour to Elizabeth I , whose hair (in shades of red and amber) and fine bone structure set standards of beauty at the English court. The jewelled rockroses in the young woman's velvet cap, the roses embroidered on her white sleeves and the pink placed by her ear (the pink of perfection) are the counterparts of the white and pink of her complexion; little eye make-up is used, except possibly a touch of henna pink shadow, so it was important for the eyes to be large and well shaped, not set too deeply into the head."
The Tudors were Welsh. They brought peace to England after 150 years of virtually continuous warfare, encouraged new religious ideas, overseas exploration and colonisation.
Queen Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603):
- Age 25-69;
- Daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn;
- Unmarried;
- Buried in Westminster Abbey.
Elizabeth I - the last Tudor monarch - was born at Greenwich Palace on 7 September 1533, the younger daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn.
When Elizabeth came to the throne, she was 25. She succeeded to the throne on her half-sister's death in November 1558.
Elizabeth liked hunting and enjoyed court masques (entertainment of poetry, songs and dancing). She was very well-educated and was fluent in six languages. She did not marry and was known as the Virgin Queen. Elizabeth made England Protestant again and her will was the law. During her reign, England became enemy of Catholic Spain, and Elizabeth fought against Philip II's navy (the Spanish Armada). The Tudor period ended with the death of Queen Elizabeth I on 24th March 1603 after 45 years on the throne. She had no husband or children to succeed her.
Elizabeth I's rule is remembered as the Golden Age of English history. Under her rule, England advanced in such areas as foreign trade, exploration, literature, and the arts.
During Elizabeth's reign the age of exploration began with explorers such as Francis Drake claiming new lands for England and introducing new materials and foods. The American State, Virginia, is named after her."
The "Darnley Portrait" of Elizabeth I (c. 1575)
Here are some of my thoughts and impressions about the Elizabethan beauty rituals after doing some research:
Queen Elizabeth I was well known for her beauty rituals, her looks, her temper. She was often referred to as "the virgin queen" because she did not marry. But she wasn't always that "glamorous" queen that is presented to us in the portraits after her coronation.
When she was younger she refused to do her hair and had a very simple taste in terms of clothing and styling. Maybe that was because she was still under the control of her sister, queen Mary, who was promoting Roman Catholicism, which was a restrictive religion.
After she was crowned, she has became like a elebrity nowadays, everyone wanted to look like her and they made her the ideal of feminine beauty of the era. She was idolized by both men and women, and by women especially for how she used to do her make-up, hair, how she used to dress. As Elizabeth got older, she became obsessed with the preservation of her beauty. and promoted the use of cosmetics and make-up. She loved the appearance of her hands, and that's why she has often been portrayed with her hands showing and she used various cosmetics to keep them "young". But what people of that era didn't know was that the use of lead based cosmetics was harmful to the skin, and Elizabeth, by the age of 28, had her skin ruined. She also used to wear wigs and pieces of hair, just like extensions, because the hairstyles were really elaborated and time consuming and because as she grew older she started to lose her natural hair due to overstyling.
Gunn Fenja says, in the book "Artificial face: A history of cosmetics" that "Elizabeth's coronation on 15 January 1559 marked the beginning of a new phase of the Renaissance in England. The young queen epitomised the spirit of the age, combining scholarship, statecraft and queenly authority with feminine allure, She attracted to her court brilliant and unusual men who in every way reflected a new mode of thought. The Gothic shadow of early Tudor England ebbed away before the promise of a new brilliant future. The fashions of the day reflected this change in attitude. The ponderous magnificence of early Tudor costume dissapeared in favour of lighter padded clothes, which made use of lavish and bright coloured fabrics, exquisite embroidery and huge lace ruffs. An amalgam of these features have fashion a feminine quality.
This was certainly due to Elizabeth. It would be true to say that no single individual has ever exerted such an influence on the fashions and beauty of the period [...]. In the Queen was personified the Elizabethan ideal of beauty.
When she ascended the throne at twenty-five years of her age her natural handsomeness was beyond dispute, but the preservation of her beauty became an obsession stemming from feminine vanity and perhaps a sense of insecurity which was both political and emotional. Certainly this interest in preserving her appearance prompted Elizabeth to resort the use of ingenious cosmetic artifice.
Cosmetics had begun to be generally used by the year of her coronation."
John Guy says, in his book "The Tudors - A very short introduction", that "Elizabeth was a strong ruler with a winning, but often imperious, manner. She took a high view of her royal prerogative, and held as robust a belief in the divine right of kings as her father and successor. She had a sharp tongue and a smouldering temper. She could be vain, indecisive, and isolationist."
According to Aileen Ribeiro, in her book "Facing Beauty - Painted Women & Cosmetic Art", "Elizabeth I was the paradigm of beauty in elite English circles during the second half of the century, celebrated in verse even as an old woman, by which time she had become a kind of dazzling painted icon, depicted in her portraits from the 1580s onwards, a psyhical presence created by elaborate and patterned clothing loaded with jewellery , and a mask-like face. In a portrait attributed to the queen's Serjeant Painter George Gower of about 1588, she is shown in an amber-coloured wig (she had a vast "wardrobe" of wigs in shades of red and gold), on which is set a headdress of diamonds and pearls. Her face is painted white, the fineness of the skin emphasized by the veins on the temple, painted with woad or indigo mixed with ceruse; the eyebrows are barely visible, the cheeks tinged with pink and the lips reddened."
George Gower, Elizabeth I, c.1588. Philip Mould Historical Portraits, London.
Gunn Fenja, in the book "Artificial face: A history of cosmetics", says that: "Her [Elizabeth's] face make-up of white powder, rouge and lip dye glazed with egg white had set the fashion for other Elizabethan women. She also plucked her eyebrows and forehead to reveal a greater expanse of white skin, a medieval habit that persisted throughout the Tudor and Elizabethan periods. To draw attention to her high plucked forehead and to simulate the translucency of a perfect white skin, Elizabeth even painted artificial veins on her brow. This quaint cosmetic device was most probably used to replace, in middle age, the natural beauty of a youthful complexion. Cosmetics and scents were imported for Elizabeth from all over the Continent and, as she grew older, she tried many lotions and elixirs that purported to preserve or recreate youth."
Queen Elizabeth I. Detail of an engraving, by William Rogers, which illustrates a bizzare cosmetic fashion. The painting of artificial veins on the forehead was probably adopted by Elizabeth in middle age to simulate a youthfully translucent complexion.
Elizabethans loved their queen, and they wrote poetry for her, which can be used by us nowadays to depict how she looked like:
"Her haire fine threads of finest gold,
In curled knots man's thought to hold,
But that her fore-head sayes, In me
A Whiter beautie you may see;
Whiter! - In deede more white than snow
Which on cold winter's face doth grow.
(Sir Philip Sidney, Arcadia)"
"A Mayden Queen that shone as Titan's Ray
In glistring gold an perelesse pretious stone
(Spenser, "The Faerie Queene")"
When it comes about Elizabethans beauty ideals, having a pale complexion and a large forehead was a must have if you wanted to be seen as wealthy, noble and smart. Poor people, workers, peasants, couldn't afford keeping their skin fair because they had to work outside, in the sun, and this made their skin tanned. Back then, tanned skin, black hair, black eyebrows, was something unpleasant for a noble and wealthy lady and for men too. To emphasize the whiteness of their skin, Elizabethan women used to use cosmetics to whiten the face, bleaches to whiten the eyebrows, and they even shaved the first inch of their hairline to make their foreheads look larger. They spent a lot of time protecting themselves from the sun, using hats and scarfes, to preserve their beauty.
However, they didn't bath that often. Bath was considered harmful to the health, so they used perfumes instead. The queen had her own recipes of perfumes and cosmetics, but I'm going to talk about this topic in another post. They didn't usually wash their teeth so those who had good teeth used to be only the richer ones, but only a short amount of time. After their ruined their teeth by not cleaning them properly, they used to suck jewels because they considered that this would make their breath fresher.
According to Aileen Ribeiro, in her book "Facing Beauty - Painted Women & Cosmetic Art", "In northern Europe, the emphasis was on an almost unnaturally white skin, as can be seen in anonymous British School portrait of a young woman, of 1569, tentatively identified as a Swedish maid-of-honour to Elizabeth I , whose hair (in shades of red and amber) and fine bone structure set standards of beauty at the English court. The jewelled rockroses in the young woman's velvet cap, the roses embroidered on her white sleeves and the pink placed by her ear (the pink of perfection) are the counterparts of the white and pink of her complexion; little eye make-up is used, except possibly a touch of henna pink shadow, so it was important for the eyes to be large and well shaped, not set too deeply into the head."
British School, Young Woman, 1569, Tate Britain, London.
Gunn Fenja says, in the book "Artificial face: A history of cosmetics" that "In England, the spirit of the Renaissance was slow to awaken and only came to full fruition in the reign of Elizabeth I [...].
Tudor feminine beauty is perfectly represented in a portrait of Anne Boleyn by an unknown artist of the day. Her hair is drawn smoothly back under the pearled archway of a Tudor headdress, which frames her white oval face and draws attention to her dark eyes with their secretive expression reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa'.
For both sexes a pale complexion remained, as in the Middle Ages, a desired feature of their appearance. A light white powder and blush of rouge may have been used by a few women to enhance their complexions, but cosmetics were not generally used until Elizabeth's reign. Instead, preventive measures were taken to ensure the preservation of a white skin. Undoubtedly, the Tudor gable headdress, which owed its inspiration to the architectural conventions of the day, sheltered the face from the sun and, later in the century, the same purpose was served by the 'French hood' which shaded the forehead."
Anne Boleyn, by Unknown artist, late 16th century (circa 1533-1536)
Young woman with plucked eyebrows and shaved hairline.
Drawing by Urs Graf, 1518.
Claudia of Beaune. School of Clouet, 1568.
The eyebrows are plucked and the hairline is shaved.
According to Gunn Fenja, in the book "Artificial face: A history of cosmetics": "Elizabeth's vanity influenced the whole environment of court life. Personal appearance was of such prime importance that it resulted in an increased sale of mirrors. At the beginning of the sixteenth century mirrors were an unusual luxury, but at the end of Elizabeth's reign they had become a universal necessity."
A lady at her looking glass.
Modern interpretation of historical Elizabethan music:
Coronation Banquet - David Hirschfelder
Here's an interestion video about women's make-up throughout history, which includes the Elizabethan era:
References:
- Ribeiro, A. (2011) Facing beauty: Painted women and cosmetic art. United States: Yale University Press.
- Guy, J. (2013) The Tudors: A very short introduction. 2nd edn. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
- Corson, R. (2001) Fashions in hair: The First Five Thousand years. 2nd edn. London: Peter Owen Publishers.
- Gunn, F. (1975) Artificial face: A history of cosmetics. New York: Hippocrene Books.
- British life and culture in the UK - Woodlands junior school (2014) Available at: http://projectbritain.com/ (Accessed: 2015).
- Elizabeth I of England (2015) in Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_I_of_England (Accessed: 2015).
- Back to topArtist (2015) Available at: http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw00142/Anne-Boleyn (Accessed: 2015).
- BuzzFeedVideo (2015) Women’s makeup throughout history. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g08-_NExOX0 (Accessed: 2015).
- My channel (2012) ‘Elizabeth’ (1998) soundtrack- 6. Coronation banquet. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTRJO_3Su5I (Accessed: 2015).
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