Left: François Hubert Drouais. Madame Sophie de France (1734–1782). 1762. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 64.159.1.
Let’s just get this out there, right now: The eighteenth century was not filled with people wearing bad clown makeup.
For some reason, people today are obsessed with the idea that everyone in the eighteenth century wore lead-based white face paint that caused their faces to fall off. Talk about a visual! This sounds like some sort of Marie Antoinette meets Walking Dead mash-up. No, thanks!
We’re not saying that lead wasn’t used in cosmetics at all. Eighteenth-century sources believed lead was used during the idealized Ancient Roman period, [1] and there is even a white face pomatum recipe in Abdeker (1756). However, even with the reference to white lead, Abdeker mentions that there were better options for white pigment. [2] Fast forward twenty years to the Toilet de Flora (1772) [3] and we find no references to the use of white lead in the recipes. By the 1780s, magazines are noting how dangerous lead-based makeup is to one’s health.
“[…] it may be observed that the certain ruin of the complexion to say nothing of more serious maladies, must ever attend the constant application of this drug.”[4]
While white lead makeup did exist, we find it to be an avoidable extreme when pursuing eighteenth-century beauty. You’ll notice we do not include any white paint/clown goop in our book. Why? Because eighteenth-century beauty was ultimately about improving what one already had. [5] Rouge, lip color and an eyebrow pencil are all a girl needs for that fashionable eighteenth-century appearance. Books like Toilet de Flora emphasize excellent skin care using creams, washes, waters and oils and a large selection of rouges, lip salves and ways to darken your eyebrows. [6] Portraits from the eighteenth century show women that look beautiful and natural. This is what we wanted to re-create with the following recipes.