Pod Insights You're Dead to Me Renaissance Beauty (Radio Edit) About this episode Greg Jenner is joined in 16th-century Italy by historian Professor Jill Burke and comedian Tatty Macleod to learn all about Renaissance beauty standards and treatments.
Early modern Italy is renowned for the gorgeous artworks created by painters like Titian, Rubens and Botticelli, many of them featuring beautiful women looking at themselves in mirrors or getting made up for a night out. In this episode, we take you through a Renaissance Get Ready With Me as we explore how these women would have been taking care of their hair and skin. We look at what hairstyles and makeup men and women wore, how often they bathed, whether or not they removed their body hair, and how they shaped their bodies through dieting and underwear. Along the way, we dive into the recipes for popular cosmetics and skincare treatments, ask where Renaissance beauty standards came from, and uncover the sexist, racist and classist ideas that often underpinned them. But we also explore how their beauty routines could be an avenue for women’s self-expression, and show the importance of the history of beauty, even amidst the turbulent politics and warfare of the early modern period.
This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.
Hosted by: Greg Jenner
Research by: Emma Bentley
Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner
Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner
Audio Producer: Steve Hankey
Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett
Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse
Executive Editor: Philip Sellars
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Greg Jenner? This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
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1:09 Greg Jenner? Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are plucking our brows and caking our faces with lead as we learn all about the history of beauty in Renaissance Italy. And to help us with our makeover, we have two very special visitors to the You're Dead to Me Salon. In history corner, she's Professor of Renaissance Visual and Material Cultures at the University of Edinburgh, where her research focuses on how human bodies were thought about and modified during the Renaissance. You might have read her wonderful book, How to Be a Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity. It's Professor Jill Burke. Welcome, Jill. Hello. It's lovely to be here. And in comedy corner, she's a bilingual comedian and social media star based in Paris.
1:54 Greg Jenner? Maybe you saw her debut sellout stand-up tour, Fugue, or have seen one of her many hilarious TikToks and Instagram reels about the differences between French and British culture. It's Tatty MacLeod. Welcome to the show, Tatty.
2:06 Speaker 03 Thank you very much for having me. Excited to be here.
2:09 Greg Jenner? Delighted to have you here. First time on the show.
2:11 Speaker 03 Yes, it is indeed.
2:12 Greg Jenner? And I suppose the obvious question, do you like history?
2:16 Speaker 03 Do I like history? Yeah, right? I mean, we've all got one.
2:21 Greg Jenner? Great.
2:22 Speaker 03 Depends who you're asking. In what context? Relationship history? I was gonna say.
2:29 Speaker 03 I'm intrigued, I'm interested, I'm curious, I'm open, I'm present. Great.
2:34 Greg Jenner? You're known for your get ready with me videos. Do you know anything about the Renaissance era and beauty trends?
2:39 Speaker 03 No, I mean, I don't know today's beauty trends. I feel like if there's something, you know, especially when you're on social media, and I'm in my mid 30s, so I'm really not the target audience for TikTok. And I spend a lot of my time just scrolling through, trying to keep up with the never ending new brands, new products, new fandango thing that you should be buying. So if anything, I'm probably closer to Renaissance history makeup trends than I am to current makeup trends.
3:08 Greg Jenner? So what do you know?
3:15 Greg Jenner? That brings us to the first segment of the podcast, the So What Do You Know? This is where I guess what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. Maybe you've seen famous Titian paintings of lovely Renaissance ladies gazing ardently at themselves in the mirror or putting on their makeup. You might have heard of Queen Elizabeth the First painting her face with white lead. I mean, who can forget Margot Robbie's look in the Mary Queen Scots movie? Barbie would never. But how did women and men really get ready in the Renaissance? What makeup looks were trending? And why was arsenic a vital part of the beauty regime? Let's find out. Professor Jill, let's start with the beauty basics, a primer on primer, if you will. When was the Renaissance period, like technically? Because it overlaps the medieval period in a very confusing way. How would you define it?
4:00 Speaker 04 It is a little bit confusing in that it's related to the rebirth of classical antiquity, the interest in classical antiquity, which in Italy started a little bit before other places in Europe. So normally we'd say from about 1400, so 15th century in Italy, to about maybe 1650, something like that.
4:15 Greg Jenner? Right.
4:16 Speaker 04 So late Middle Ages and part of the early modern period.
4:19 Speaker 03 So basically, the rest of Europe had to catch up.
4:22 Speaker 04 Yeah.
4:22 Speaker 03 Sort of like a fashion trend that starts somewhere.
4:24 Speaker 04 Absolutely, that's exactly.
4:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, okay, I'm with you.
4:27 Speaker 04 Yeah.
4:28 Speaker 03 I'm comparing it to cargo pants.
4:29 Speaker 04 People like Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo, all those people.
4:33 Greg Jenner? All the turtles, yes.
4:34 Speaker 04 All the turtles, who made like a massive difference and a massive change to the way that people painted and the way that the people saw things. And had an effect actually on the way that people understood beauty. So if you look at, say, maybe you'll be able to think of Botticelli's Birth of Venus, you know, when she's.
4:51 Speaker 03 I know that one, yes.
4:52 Speaker 04 And she's naked, she's, you know, rising from the waves. That has an idea of female beauty that's different from the Middle Ages, a different shaped body. It's relating to classical sculpture. And when people saw these paintings and prints from these paintings, they decided to change their bodies to look more like the paintings.
5:14 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
5:14 Speaker 04 So there's a change, not just in art, but also in the way that people understood their own bodies and other people's beauty.
5:19 Greg Jenner? It's a nostalgia vibe.
5:20 Speaker 04 Yeah, absolutely.
5:21 Greg Jenner? And they're going way back to the Roman era.
5:23 Speaker 04 Way back to the Roman era and they're reading, and, and ancient Greece as well, that they know more about ancient Rome. And they're also reading more classical texts, so people like Galen, who's one of the most important medical writers in classical times. They're rereading him and Galen writes about cosmetics as well.
5:39 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
5:39 Speaker 04 So doctors start to be really interested in cosmetics and wealthy women start to commission doctors to cure any of their beauty ailments as well. So there's a real abundance of recipes from this period.
5:51 Speaker 03 Oh my God, it's so fascinating, the parallels of like botox and surgery, you know, like, you can imagine it back then just being like, have you heard of doctor?
6:00 Speaker 04 Absolutely, yeah.
6:01 Greg Jenner? Doctor Falopio.
6:02 Speaker 04 Falopio, yeah.
6:03 Speaker 03 I've heard that Anne Boleyn's been speaking.
6:05 Greg Jenner? Famous for his tubes.
6:06 Speaker 04 Yes, exactly.
6:07 Speaker 03 It's incredible. He does amazing work for the royal family, you can just imagine.
6:11 Speaker 04 Falopio, who wrote about the first time about the Falopian tubes, also gave beauty tips advice. And he lectured on beauty at the University of Padua. And from then, this is a, a big university where doctors from all over Europe came. And so they'd listen to Falopio and then they'd go and write their own beauty books. So yeah, there's loads of similarities.
6:27 Greg Jenner? The best selling one is Marinello's Ornament of Ladies.
6:30 Speaker 04 Ornament of Ladies, yes. This was, came out in fifteen sixty two, but um, beauty recipe book started in the fifteen twenties. So, the Ornament di Le Donne, the ornament of women by a doctor, Giovanni Marinello, has about four thousand recipes.
6:44 Greg Jenner? Wow.
6:45 Speaker 04 Marinello's book tells you the ideal look at the beginning of every chapter and then says things like, if you're hairy, you're like a wild beast, your husb- you can't blame your husband for leaving you. This kind of thing. So it's really terrible. It's, it's funny, but at the same time, you really recognize these tropes about beauty, about women. So there'll be recipes for things like, recipes if you want to look forever twenty or twenty five.
7:08 Speaker 03 Are you serious?
7:09 Speaker 04 I am serious, yeah.
7:10 Speaker 03 Because it just, I don't know if it's like funny or fascinating or worrying that nearly hundreds of years later, they're thinking, yeah, well, I mean, not a huge amount has changed.
7:19 Greg Jenner? No.
7:20 Speaker 03 Like, that sounds like if you pitched that as a marketing approach to something that you were writing now, you'd be like, yep.
7:24 Speaker 04 But that's a real facet of Renaissance culture because there's a lot in Renaissance culture about pretending to be better than you are.
7:30 Greg Jenner? Right. Well, we're structuring this episode a bit differently, Tatty. We're gonna do it like a get ready with me video, but we're gonna, you know, and which means we need an Italian Renaissance couple. We need a fella and a lady. Do you wanna name them for us? Who are our hot Italian couple?
7:42 Speaker 03 Oh, okay. Her name is Botticella, and then let's call him Angelo.
7:49 Greg Jenner? Angelo.
7:50 Speaker 04 Oh, very good.
7:51 Speaker 03 Botticella and Angelo. Oh my god, that's, you know.
7:54 Greg Jenner? Let's start their routine there. We start with hygiene. Tatty.
7:57 Speaker 03 Oh, really?
7:57 Greg Jenner? Yeah. What type of washing do you think they're doing? Do you think they're doing it in everything shower?
7:59 Speaker 03 I'm gonna ask me how I wash.
8:01 Greg Jenner? No, no.
8:03 Greg Jenner? I'm not gonna ask you that.
8:04 Speaker 03 No, because people have this, yeah, French, but anyway, no, you're half French, so anyway.
8:08 Greg Jenner? I'm half French, but I wouldn't go that far. Um, no, how are you imagining them getting clean? Everything showers or much more modest?
8:16 Speaker 03 I'm thinking more like a cloth and a big copper basin.
8:19 Greg Jenner? Mm hmm.
8:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's what I imagine more. And probably staff washing their back next to a big fire. Let's place it in spring.
8:29 Greg Jenner? Lovely.
8:29 Speaker 03 That's nice for the story.
8:30 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:31 Speaker 03 It's spring, we've got some nice dapple, natural light coming through. So a big copper basin by a fireplace, which probably isn't lit because it's warm enough.
8:38 Speaker 04 People didn't have baths generally. Some really, really, really wealthy people had running water and had running baths in their house, but they were like, maybe a bit above the echelon of Botticella.
8:47 Greg Jenner? We're in juke territory.
8:48 Speaker 03 You don't know Angelo. Angelo's in real life.
8:52 Speaker 03 Okay.
8:52 Greg Jenner? It's had a great year.
8:53 Speaker 04 But copper basins.
8:54 Speaker 03 Excuse me.
8:54 Speaker 04 It's good because you would have a copper basin to wash your hair in.
8:57 Greg Jenner? Oh, well done, Tatty. Very good.
8:58 Speaker 03 Thank you very much.
8:58 Speaker 04 Often on a stand, you'd have obviously some servants to bring in hot water for you.
9:03 Greg Jenner? Of course, doing it yourself.
9:04 Speaker 04 Goodness me, you wouldn't do it yourself.
9:05 Greg Jenner? No.
9:05 Speaker 04 Um, because you didn't have baths at home, you'd also go to the bath house. That might be as much as once a month.
9:11 Speaker 03 So people would um wash once a month?
9:14 Speaker 04 Well, they'd wash in the bath house once a month.
9:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, which is a proper wash.
9:17 Speaker 04 But they'd wash every day. And washing often involved rubbing your body with towels.
9:22 Speaker 03 Yeah.
9:23 Speaker 04 There's quite a lot of rubbing your body with towels, so a lot of head health because they are worried that noxious vapors would build up in your head overnight. So in the morning.
9:30 Greg Jenner? That's called a hangover, I think.
9:31 Speaker 04 Yeah. So in the morning, well, they're all drunk probably quite a lot of the time as well. You'd comb your hair very rigorously, you'd rub your head, you'd rub your face, you'd have to um blow your nose, you'd brush your teeth probably with a little cloth or some wood. And um so you'd do something like that every day. There'd often be scented waters and you'd change your shirt, the very, very into changing linen and having fresh white linen.
9:55 Greg Jenner? A couple of times a day, right? Sometimes?
9:56 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah.
9:56 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
9:57 Speaker 04 So people would have like hundreds of shirts.
9:59 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
9:59 Speaker 04 Even like poorest people would have 16 or 17 undershirts.
10:01 Greg Jenner? So our couple, Botticella and Angelo.
10:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:05 Greg Jenner? Lovely. Okay. Are they shaving? Are they waxing? Or are they using the depilation cream? How do you get rid of body hair in the 16th century?
10:12 Speaker 03 And more specifically, Brazilian, Hollywood, just the size. What are we working with here? What's Bossy got going on down there?
10:22 Speaker 04 We are working with complete baldness.
10:24 Greg Jenner? Oh, really?
10:25 Speaker 03 Wow.
10:25 Speaker 04 Yes. A practice associated with Islamic bathing cultures. Certainly in the Middle Ages, crusaders would return with stories of having their, all their body hair shaven off in the baths.
10:35 Greg Jenner? Right.
10:36 Speaker 04 And this is very strange. But certainly by maybe the 13th century, you start to get recipes in southern Italy for a kind of Veit type cream to remove.
10:48 Speaker 04 Body hair? Oh, you don't know what's in it yet, just wait.
10:52 Greg Jenner? Tatty, yeah, other products are available, of course. Hair removal cream.
10:58 Speaker 03 I'm physically in pain. I'm empathising with these women that I've never met from hundreds of years ago. I mean, Veet is bad enough now, but back then, oh god, these poor girls.
11:10 Greg Jenner? Do you know what it's made of, Tatty?
11:11 Speaker 03 Go on.
11:12 Speaker 04 Quicklime, arsenic.
11:16 Speaker 04 What you do is you make it into a paste.
11:19 Speaker 03 Yep.
11:20 Speaker 04 And you smear it onto your body, wherever you want hair removed, as it says in the recipe. And then you leave it for the time it takes to say the Lord's Prayer twice. And then you get a maid to throw water on you. So you wash it off. And it does say you should wait until it gets hot and then remove it quickly before the flesh falls off.
11:40 Greg Jenner? Yeah, I mean, Quicklime is caustic.
11:42 Speaker 04 Yeah.
11:42 Greg Jenner? Arsenic is a toxin.
11:44 Speaker 04 Yeah.
11:44 Greg Jenner? Alum is a metal. And they're all going in your secret parts. That's not good.
11:50 Speaker 03 No, I thought the next part was going to be, put this on, and then eventually just die. That's a natural next step, isn't it? But it is fascinating, I have to say, because obviously body hair is such a political thing now. What's your choice? And I felt like, this is the first time hearing that was even a subject matter before this contemporary age. I thought it was something that was quite a new thing. But to hear that women have been suffering from this for hundreds of years, I'm going to leave here more feminist and more angry than when I came in.
12:25 Speaker 04 My job is done.
12:26 Greg Jenner? Adagized.
12:28 Speaker 03 This body hair removal routine involving arsenic and caustic, was it something that just the women were experiencing? And were men also taking off their body?
12:37 Greg Jenner? Is Angelo also whipping it all off?
12:40 Speaker 04 There's so little evidence about men's pubic hair. So there's so little evidence about men and grooming. It's really hard to understand whether they remove their hair or not. There's more evidence about women, right? And I can trace that in the recipes. If you look at the sculpture of the time, like Michelangelo's David, for example, it has very trim, neat looking pubic hair. So there might have been some trimming involved. But I'm not sure about actual complete removal.
13:07 Greg Jenner? All right, okay.
13:08 Speaker 04 I think that's unlikely.
13:08 Greg Jenner? Let's talk about hair washing. So how are they keeping that clean, Jill?
13:12 Speaker 04 Well, this is where the copper basin comes in. You'd lean over a copper basin and you'd have your maid bring in some kind of scented water or maybe some kind of shampoo, which is made with ashes. So a lye into a soap or they use things like mallow. They had conditioners, things to make hair fuller bodied. And all of these, we've made some of these and they do, are quite effective. But one of the issues in the period was how to dry your hair.
13:36 Greg Jenner? Yes.
13:36 Speaker 04 Because once you've wet your hair, you don't have a hairdryer. In the winter, it could take ages. It could take days to wash and dry your hair. And so Lucrezia Borja, who was, you know, the Pope's daughter.
13:49 Greg Jenner? Yes, we did an episode on the Borja.
13:52 Speaker 04 And the governor Spoleto actually would get really hated going to these social events that she had to go to. And she'd say, no, I'm washing my hair. I've got, simply got to wash my hair.
14:01 Speaker 03 Absolutely. I love that. No, but also that it is, look, I mean nowadays, you know, wash day. And which day do I wash? I've got to go to the gym. If I go to the gym, do I wash before, do I wash afterwards? It takes a couple of hours. Last night I slept with a hair mask on. I get it. And I actually think that is something we need to bring back. Okay, that is a completely socially acceptable reason to not turn up to an event. I can't come to work today. It's wash day.
14:26 Greg Jenner? So some of those hair sort of conditioners sound quite nice. Some of them less so. My list includes bears fat, bats blood, burnt lizards, burnt moles, crushed hedgehogs, crushed insects.
14:38 Speaker 03 So when I hear that list, I do start to understand the association between women and witches because that sounds like, that sounds like a potion.
14:47 Greg Jenner? Let's talk about just quickly, the perfect hair that you would want. Like, you know, Angelo, let's talk about later on maybe, but Botticella, what hair does she aspire to have?
14:58 Speaker 04 So in the Renaissance, it was believed that hair was a sign of your internal mixture of humors, the internal liquids that made up your body, that determined health, determined personality. And so your hair could be a sign of what you were like inside. And this is true for men and for women. So men's hair should be dark, ideally, and women's hair should be thick, wavy and golden.
15:20 Greg Jenner? Oh.
15:21 Speaker 03 I was hoping you were going to say pink.
15:23 Greg Jenner? Yes, for the record, listener, Tatty has a lovely pink bob, or you were calling her bob. What's that? What's the style?
15:28 Speaker 03 What humorous pink bob in Renaissance Italy?
15:33 Speaker 04 Well, they did talk about dying your hair red. And they, and Marinella says, I don't know why women want to do this. They're so capricious.
15:42 Speaker 03 Capricious. Okay, I can, I can get on that board.
15:46 Greg Jenner? Okay, so Angelo and Botticella, they've got washed, they're clean, they've done their hair. Now it's on to the skincare routine.
15:53 Speaker 03 Right.
15:53 Greg Jenner? What are you imagining? Korean style 11 step beauty?
15:56 Speaker 03 I mean, to be honest, nowadays, I can't even keep up with skincare routines. I take makeup off and then I put a cream on. So I'm probably not the right reference. They might even have something more complicated than that. Probably something like a vegetable oil, avocado paste on the face, maybe a bit of arsenic. Because if there's no poison, there's no peril. If there's no peril, it's not really skincare routine, is it? It's not skincare routine if you're not going to maybe die from it, is it? Take it away.
16:24 Speaker 04 Well, of course, you're completely right. No, they did. So they did have kind of complex routines. So you'd start at night, the night before, you'd cleanse your skin. And that could be something like bran or breadcrumbs mixed with scented water, so that a little bit of exfoliation.
16:39 Greg Jenner? Nice.
16:39 Speaker 04 And then you'd have a treatment and that would depend on what kind of skin you had. So you might include vinegar was quite popular. If you've got greasy skin or nettle tonic, if you've got red skin, because nettle does actually stop inflammation, or a whitener. And that would obviously include mercury and arsenic. And also snail slime was also used.
16:59 Greg Jenner? Which is back in the day, right?
17:00 Speaker 04 It's back in the day now.
17:01 Greg Jenner? I mean, we used to laugh, on horrible histories, we used to go, ha, ha, ha, snail slime. And now it's like 300 quid for a pot.
17:07 Speaker 04 So they were ahead of their time and you'd sleep with that on. And then in the morning, you'd you'd wash that off and then you'd maybe put some moisturizer on and then makeup.
17:17 Speaker 03 So pretty good actually in the skincare routine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, ahead of, okay, I respect the skincare routine.
17:23 Greg Jenner? Apart from the arsenic bleaching of the skin.
17:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, sorry, but you know, that's just, that's just, you know, part of course at this point.
17:31 Greg Jenner? Was it like Victorian times where paler skin meant you were richer? You know, pale skin, good, darker skin means you work in the sun, you must be a peasant.
17:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, because of course, beauty ideals have to be hard to achieve.
17:42 Greg Jenner? Right.
17:42 Speaker 04 What's the point of beauty ideals that are easy to achieve?
17:46 Speaker 03 Let's just take a moment to really think about that.
17:50 Speaker 04 And most women worked outside, you know, most women were working as agricultural workers, like they have done kind of throughout history. And so having paler skin was a sign of being elite, an elite woman.
18:00 Greg Jenner? But there was also a racialized element, you know, in the 16th century in Italy, we do have an awful lot of African enslaved people in Italy, right?
18:06 Speaker 04 Yeah, so there's a fashion amongst some of the elites, like Isabella Deste, who was the marchioness of Mantua, she says to her agent in Venice, can you get me a young black slave child, as black as possible, so that she looks whiter in comparison. So this is a little girl of about four.
18:24 Speaker 03 Like an accessory.
18:25 Speaker 04 Like an accessory, yeah, yeah. And then around 1520, aristocratic women start to be painted in portraits alongside black servants or slaves, really as a contrast to make their skin look paler.
18:37 Speaker 03 My god.
18:38 Greg Jenner? That's horrible.
18:39 Speaker 04 It is horrible.
18:40 Greg Jenner? Okay, uh, let's move on to something equally horrible, a different kind of horrible, white lead on the face. It's famous from the Elizabeth the First portraits, if you've seen the Margot Robbie movie, Mary Queen Scott. I mean, that's, that's bad, right? That's, that's gonna rot your face.
18:58 Speaker 04 You know, makeup historians have a problem with Margot Robbie.
19:01 Greg Jenner? No, surely not, Margot's beloved, how dare you?
19:04 Speaker 04 Not Margot, I mean, we do adore Margot Robbie, but her portrayal as Elizabeth the First, because one of the problems with white lead is that you can't actually use it, right? So people can't use, because we know it's poisonous, they knew it was not very good for you in the Renaissance as well. But recently, there's been a project in McMaster University in Canada, where they've got a nuclear physics lab, so they can use white lead and they've put it on pigskin to see what it looks like.
19:28 Greg Jenner? Right.
19:28 Speaker 04 And actually, it's not that kind of thick white paste that you see in the portraits of Elizabeth. It's actually translucent and it's light scattering. You know, like light scattering foundations that you get today? Yeah. And it's a creamy colour. Mineral foundations. Yes, it's not bright, it's not bright white or very opaque. So the idea of what Elizabeth the first looked like is partly from the portraits, but largely from using titanium dioxide as a replacement for white lead. And it's just not a very good replacement.
19:55 Greg Jenner? I see.
19:56 Speaker 04 But, you know, they had replacements for white lead even in the Renaissance, so marble dust, for example.
20:00 Greg Jenner? Oh.
20:00 Speaker 04 And I've brought along a marble dust foundation for you to try.
20:04 Greg Jenner? Egg white as well was used, wasn't it?
20:07 Speaker 04 Egg white, they use in a lot of different kinds of makeup and adds a little bit of a sheen to your face.
20:11 Greg Jenner? And egg white was used on the hair too, wasn't it?
20:13 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, they use eggs in everything. They're readily available and they're quite inexpensive, so yeah.
20:18 Greg Jenner? Let's talk about cosmetics and let's try some cosmetics. I think it's time now for us to turn ourselves into guinea pigs a little bit and try some of this stuff.
20:34 Greg Jenner? And by the magic of radio, I am now transformed into a Renaissance era beauty. And just to be clear, none of the stuff we are putting on our faces today is poisonous. We've checked. Jill, what am I wearing on my face? It smells delicious.
20:46 Speaker 04 First of all, you have Renaissance rose balm, which is very delicious smelling. It's just quite normal. It's like lip balm with beeswax. And that's actually something that I would use, actually genuinely use today. Then there's some things that you might not use. There's an anti wrinkle cream with lamb fat.
21:05 Greg Jenner? Needed, yeah.
21:05 Speaker 04 Yes, not at all. And frankincense, which normally also contains mastic, which is another kind of tree gum. And those have been found to have vitamin E, antioxidant, things like that. So they could actually affect wrinkles. Some of this Renaissance makeup is effective. And then you've got what is really great about your look is the foundation, which is made of marble dust because white lead is frowned upon nowadays.
21:31 Greg Jenner? I wonder why.
21:33 Speaker 04 I wonder why. So it's made of violet oil and rose water, which smells nice. It smells good. It's made you quite white. But you've also got beautiful rosy cheeks made with red sandalwood, which we're hoping will be able to wash off, but which may stay.
21:48 Greg Jenner? Yeah, no one told me the sandalwood would be staining the cheeks.
21:52 Speaker 03 I would run with it. It's really, it's the hero of what's happening on your face right now. It's giving Met Gala, it's giving the Oscars, it's giving Greg in a whole different light.
22:02 Greg Jenner? Thank you.
22:03 Speaker 03 If it doesn't wash off, I think you can make this work. So what I'm getting here is that really, actually, women didn't have a lot of time outside of doing their hair and makeup and making the potions.
22:16 Speaker 04 I mean, that's why you'd have all your servants, I guess.
22:18 Speaker 03 I forgot about that, of course, yes.
22:21 Greg Jenner? Was there any kind of moral backlash to all of this? We've heard about, you know, some of the kind of fear that women were deceiving men and what, but was there any kind of like haters in the comments section? You know, when we've got Angelo and Botticelli going out. Are there people going like, oh, God, this is awful and disgusting and immoral and God would be ashamed?
22:37 Speaker 03 It should all be natural.
22:38 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
22:38 Speaker 04 Oh, absolutely. I mean, well, all the way through, but particularly the Counter-Reformation in Italy comes into force in the later 16th century and in England all the way through. People are saying that cosmetics are lies, it's deceitful, that women are vain, they're spending all their money on cosmetics. Yeah, I know, it's depressing.
22:58 Speaker 03 Things just haven't changed.
22:59 Speaker 04 That they're kind of changing the face that God gave them.
23:04 Speaker 04 And that it's immoral. So a lot of kind of misogyny, general misogyny is bound up in cosmetics use. Really, the grandeur of cosmetics runs through the 16th century and then it kind of tails off as you get into the 17th century.
23:19 Greg Jenner? And we also have this fear that women are poisoning their husbands with their makeup, right? I mean, this is a thing. It happens.
23:24 Speaker 04 It is actually true. Yeah, it has happened. Yeah.
23:27 Speaker 03 Amazing. So they trick their husbands into marrying them by using makeup and then they use the makeup to kill them.
23:33 Speaker 04 I mean, you sound like just like a Renaissance priest.
23:35 Speaker 03 I'm really on.
23:36 Greg Jenner? It's a honor, isn't it?
23:37 Speaker 03 I'm really on board with it. I'm like, how can both the, how can the tool of oppression both be the tool of empowerment? Wonderful.
23:46 Speaker 04 There we go.
23:46 Greg Jenner? Feminism for the win.
23:48 Speaker 03 I'm going to lead the witches.
23:49 Speaker 04 So this is the Aqua Tifana murders, very, very notorious in the 17th century, where they reckon like hundreds of men, of husbands generally, were killed by women using, using face cream. So they put this face mink into their husbands' food or drink and they'd kill them slowly over a matter of weeks. And they set up a sting operation to find out this woman, they tricked, yeah, they, they sent someone along trying to buy some of the poison. And in fact, she was an agent of the Roman police in disguise. The poisoner sold her it and they kind of swooped out and arrested her.
24:24 Speaker 03 Wow.
24:25 Greg Jenner? It's amazing, isn't it?
24:32 Greg Jenner? Okay, so I think it's time for us to get to the nuance window. This is the part of the show where Tatty and I sit quietly in front of the mirror and fix our makeup, or I try and remove mine anyway, for two minutes while Professor Jill enters the dressing room to tell us something we need to know about Renaissance beauty. My stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Jill.
24:49 Speaker 04 Okay, so stories about past cosmetic use can be delightful and they can be funny, but they mask some pretty serious history. How we look isn't governed just by our genes but is mutable. A complex to-ing and fro-ing between external forces such as food availability, types of work, our environment, and the choices we make to look after and adorn our bodies, hair and faces. It's only recently that historians have realized that the history of cosmetic and hygiene practices is no mere amusing side quest, but reveals much about the concerns, assumptions and prejudices of the past. Cosmetic recipes and ideas spread across cultures are shaped by trade, fashion and colonialism. Assumptions about ideal beauty are steeped in preconceptions of gender, race and class. Prejudices against people typically based on their appearance alone.
25:35 Speaker 04 Cosmetics are often criticized as they thwart attempts to read inner character through external appearance. So large-scale historical shifts play out in our bathroom mirrors and affect how we understand our own bodies in relationship to the world. The history of beauty allows us to empathize with people in distant times and places, recognize their vanities, their frailties, their hopes and their fears. In a patriarchal society like Renaissance Europe, and let's face it, most past societies, women's hope of social progress or financial wellbeing was typically dependent on the goodwill of men. Looking your best was less vanity than necessity. Inventing and applying cosmetics was often associated with poorer women, people who were typically illiterate, so don't turn up in historical sources, and if they do, only in court records. Reconstructing cosmetic
26:20 Speaker 04 recipes has given us a rich insight into these women's ingenuity, their cleverness in making ends meet, their understanding of what we now call science, and their social networks. Compared to military history, say, or the biographies of great men, the history of beauty gives us a window into a multiplicity of experiences and a chance to remember lives that have been frequently disparaged or dismissed.
26:39 Greg Jenner? Thank you so much.
26:40 Speaker 03 Wonderful.
26:41 Greg Jenner? Really interesting.
26:42 Speaker 03 Yeah.
26:43 Greg Jenner? It is easy, I think, to sort of think, oh, makeup, you know, whatever. It's really interesting.
26:48 Speaker 03 It also reminds us, and it's still a conversation we have now on social media especially, about how dismissive people can be about makeup, people doing makeup, and there's very much attitude of, oh, God, you've got nothing better to do with your time. And that actually, how much of women's history is linked to that industry, sometimes not even by choice, but how dismissing it like that sort of doesn't allow us to hear those voices and that existence and what they were up to. So, thank you for bringing it to the table.
27:18 Speaker 04 You're welcome. Thank you.
27:20 Greg Jenner? And thank you for smearing it on my face.
27:22 Speaker 04 Anytime.
27:23 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
27:24 Greg Jenner? Thank you so much, Tatty. Thank you so much, Professor Jill. Listener, if you want more on historical beauty standards, check out our episode on the history of high heel shoes. It's an absolute classic from back in the day. And also, we did one on hair care entrepreneur, Madame C J Walker. And for more on Renaissance Italy, why not listen to our episode on the Borgias? They were absolutely wild. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to get episodes 28 days earlier than on any other app. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We had the brilliant Professor Jill Burke from the University of Edinburgh. Thank you, Jill.
27:56 Speaker 04 Thank you.
27:57 Greg Jenner? And in Comedy Corner, we have the truly terrific Tatty Macleod. Thank you, Tatty.
28:00 Speaker 03 Thank you.
28:01 Greg Jenner? And to you, lovely listener. Join me next time as we rifle through the bathroom cabinet of another historical subject. But for now, I'm off to go and find enough bats to keep my curly locks looking luscious. Please don't report me to any animal rights groups. Bye.
28:18 Greg Jenner? You're Dead to Me is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4.
28:33 Speaker 05 Hello, Russell Kane here. I used to love British history, be proud of it. Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, massive fan of stand-up comedians, obviously, Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor. That has become much more challenging, for I am the host of BBC Radio 4's Evil Genius, the show where we take heroes and villains from history and try to work out whether they're evil or genius. Do not catch up on BBC Sounds by searching Evil Genius if you don't want to see your heroes destroyed, but if, like me, you quite enjoy it, have a little search. Listen to Evil Genius with me, Russell Kane. Go to BBC Sounds and have your world destroyed.
29:19 Speaker 06 Welcome to The Haunted Library.
29:23 Speaker 06 Join me, Colin Morgan, as I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. A story of science and ambition, loneliness and longing, and what it truly means to be human.
29:39 Speaker 06 Listen to The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts, or find us on YouTube.
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