For 1000’s of years, artists have harnessed pigments to articulate concepts and feelings within the type of work, drawings, prints, and painted sculpture. But most of the similar pigments have additionally been utilized to the physique to switch or improve the wearer’s look. This text explores a number of the pigments which have bridged the worlds of artwork and cosmetics, tracing their use from antiquity to the current day.
Pigments within the On a regular basis – Cosmetics
How Lengthy Have People Used Cosmetics?
It’s troublesome to determine precisely when early people started adorning themselves with color for beauty functions, however rock work counsel that it dates to a minimum of the Higher Paleolithic (50,000 to 10,000 years in the past). Pigments like charcoal, chalk, and iron oxide-based ochres could have been mixed with animal fats and utilized to the physique to point standing and id, or as a part of collective ritual. The follow is believed to have been linked to the event of language and summary thought. Sadly, in contrast to work made on rocks, physique ornament is archaeologically ‘invisible’, which means that proof of it needs to be inferred from instruments related to pigment-processing.
Cosmetics within the Historical World
The primary use of cosmetics as we’d recognise it – merchandise utilized to the face, eyes, lips, and cheeks to reinforce the wearer’s magnificence – might be traced to Bronze Age civilisations in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Cosmetics in historical Egypt are notably effectively documented. The traditional Egyptians used inexperienced Malachite for eyeshadow, black kohl produced from the mineral galena to line their eyes, and Purple Ochre to color their cheeks and lips. In Historical Rome, Purple Ochre from Belgium was thought of to make the perfect blusher, however a extra toxic different was Cinnabar, a crimson mercury sulphide pigment that was additionally utilized in Roman frescoes.
One of many earliest surviving examples of lipstick was present in Iran and dates from between 1936 and 1687 BCE. It consists of a crimson iron-oxide pigment and shimmering quartz. Later, Queen Cleopatra (69-30 BCE) was believed to have used lipstick containing floor fish scales that will have made her lips glisten.
Portrait of a Younger Girl with a Gilded Wreath, A.D. 120 – 140
Roman Interval, from Egypt
Encaustic on wooden with gold leaf, 36.5 x 17.8 cm | 14.4 x 7 in
The Metropolitan Museum of Artwork
Within the historical world, the road between cosmetics and drugs was extra blurred than it’s at the moment. In historical Egypt, each women and men would use kohl to line their eyes, and quite a few texts describe its medicinal worth. It not solely elevated the looks of the wearer but additionally protected their eyes from the glare of the solar, repelled bugs, and prevented or handled eye infections. Some trendy analysis has proven that galena, a lead sulphate mineral broadly utilized in historical Egyptian kohl, could have triggered a robust immune response that helped the physique struggle an infection. Though any therapeutic advantages should be weighed towards the poisonous results of lead.
Funerary Masks of the Overseeer of Builders Amenhotep, ca. 1427–1390 B.C.
Higher Egypt, Thebes
Cartonnage, paint, 50 x 42 x 45.7 cm | 19.7 x 16.5 x 18 in
The Metropolitan Museum of Artwork
Dying to be Stunning?
Lead White is an historical pigment composed of fundamental lead carbonate – Rembrandt couldn’t have painted his characteristically gooey impasto highlights with out it. Nonetheless, centuries earlier than it graced the palettes of the Previous Masters, it was utilized in cosmetics. In Northern China, beauty containers courting from the eighth century BCE have been discovered to include Lead White. Utilized to the pores and skin, it will produce a pale, luminous look that confirmed that the wearer was rich, not uncovered to the solar throughout out of doors guide labour. This magnificence ultimate was additionally shared by historical Mediterranean cultures, and later turned prevalent in Europe.
Mary of Burgundy, 1528
Attributed to Grasp H.A. or A.H.
Oil on fir panel, 43.9 x 30.5 cm | 17.3 x 12 in
The Metropolitan Museum of Artwork
Lead White is poisonous, and wearers may expertise uncomfortable side effects together with stomach ache, confusion, and hair loss. Additionally it is believed that lead publicity made the pores and skin mottled and scarred, solely growing dependence on the toxic product. The historic determine most notoriously related to this affliction was Queen Elizabeth I of England. She is broadly believed to have used a Lead White beauty referred to as Venetian Ceruse to cowl scars left by a smallpox an infection earlier in her life. A 1600 account described Queen Elizabeth as “constantly painted, not solely throughout her face, however her very neck and breast additionally, and that the identical was in some locations close to half an inch thick.”
This picture continues to tell how the Tudor Queen is portrayed in in style media – as an ageing monarch sporting a thick layer of white face paint. Nonetheless, many students argue that the account is probably going exaggerated and that many different modern descriptions don’t point out that she was coated in white paint. On high of that, Venetian Ceruse doesn’t seem in her stock information. Nonetheless, we will say for sure that she powdered her nostril with Vermilion Purple, a poisonous mercury sulphide pigment. Vermilion was additionally broadly utilized by painters from antiquity till the twentieth century. For instance, it’s the wealthy crimson utilized by Van Gogh to color the crimson bedspread in his Bed room work.
The Bed room, 1889
Vincent van Gogh
Oil on canvas, 73.6 x 92.3 cm | 29 x 36.4 in
Artwork Institute Chicago
Pigments in Fashionable Cosmetics
Not all pigments utilized in historic make-up have been toxic. Prussian Blue is a non-toxic blue that may be present in works by artists from Hokusai to Canaletto, and throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was additionally used to color veins onto the face and chest to make the pores and skin look pale and translucent. Prussian Blue remains to be used at the moment in merchandise like eyeshadows and nail varnishes.
In the event you put on make-up, you might be probably utilizing a number of the similar pigments in your face as you do in your portray palette. Titanium White, Chromium Oxide Inexperienced, and Artificial Iron Oxides are all generally present in complexion merchandise like basis and concealer. In fact, the components utilized in cosmetics are specifically refined and formulated to be secure to be used on the pores and skin, and it isn’t advisable to make use of artist paints on the physique.
One other incessantly used pigment in trendy cosmetics is Manganese Violet. Normally present in eyeshadows, this color was invented in 1868 and was one of many pigments that revolutionised the palettes of nineteenth-century artists. You’ll be able to see its attribute reddish hue within the work of Claude Monet.
Vétheuil, 1901
Claude Monet
Oil on canvas, 90 x 93 cm | 35.5 x 36.6 in
Artwork Institute Chicago
Ultramarine pigments, which may vary from blue to violet to pink, are additionally utilized in cosmetics. The story of Ultramarine Blue is a rare one – traditionally, it was produced from lapis lazuli, a semi-precious mineral mined primarily in Afghanistan. In Europe, it turned probably the most prized and costliest blue in artists’ palettes, most famously used to color the robes of the Virgin Mary.
The Imaginative and prescient of Saint Francis, 1597-1607
Lodovico Carracci
Oil on copper, 37.2 x 28.6 cm | 14.65 x 11.25 in
Artwork Institute Chicago
Within the nineteenth century, a course of for making artificial Ultramarine Blue, chemically similar to the pure product, was developed. What was as soon as the most costly pigment in historical past turned one of the inexpensive, and at the moment it may be present in various beauty merchandise, notably these used across the eyes. In an intriguing historic parallel, pure Ultramarine Blue produced from lapis lazuli was additionally utilized in historical Egyptian eye make-up.
From pure earths to trendy artificial compounds, the worlds of artists’ pigments and cosmetics have lengthy overlapped. Whether or not utilized to the physique or to a canvas, color has all the time been a method of telling the world who we’re, or how we want to be seen.
Uncover our Pigment Tales and the world of color historical past.
Additional Studying
Introducing Jackson’s Pigment Tales E-book
Introducing Jackson’s Artist Pigment Units
Recreating the Color Palette of Claude Monet
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