Face and Image. Painting and Cosmetics, 1500-1800

The proposed research will examine face painting as a vehicle of Early Modern artistic, philosophical and scientific discourses on the representation and the relation of face and image. Early Modern cosmetics treatises discussed iconocritical arguments together with actual art theory and experiences from theatre and artistic practice. Exemplarily, the English cleric Thomas Tuke wrote in his anti-cosmetics treatise Discourse against painting and tincturing of women in 1616 on a woman`s painted face: And though shee bee the creature of God, as she is a woman, yet is she her owne creatisse, as a picture. This critique of artificial beauty imputed a double nature to the painted woman. The painted face addresses both God, and the woman as the artist. Challenging the relation of art and nature, Tuke`s reference to god was referring to picture disputes both of Late Antiquity and of England`s iconoclastic periods of the 1530s and 1640s. Face and image aims to analyze the interplay of painting and face painting in terms of art theory, picture history, and history epistemology. Alongside exemplary writings on cosmetics and art theory, color recipes, literature and drama in England, Italy, the Netherlands and France from 16th to 18th centuries it will develop a fundamental basis of terminology and conceptual history of cosmetics writings. Then, by confronting the conceptional level of face painting with artistic practice, Face and image will explore if the art theoretical and epistemological capacities of face painting were reflected by painting itself. For this reason, the project will focus portraiture. The proposed study will contribute to the differentiation and specification of central categories of Early Modern image- and culture theory that will include >natural< and >artificial<, >art<, >color<, >enlivenment<, as well as >face<. Thus, Face and image will provide a foundation for the history of the >artwork< in the era of the emerging art markets in Europe and the beginning of the institutionalization of artists` training and of art criticism. In addition, the approach of the proposed study will open the subject of cosmetics thematically and methodologically to the question of Early Modern representations and practices of both >image< and >body<.

The project brings together body and beauty, art and medicine and examines face painting as a vehicle of Early Modern artistic, philosophical and scientific discourses on the representation and the relation of body and image. Early Modern treatises of cosmetics and the beauty of the body discussed iconocritical arguments together with actual art theory and experiences from theatre and artistic practice. Exemplarily, the English cleric Thomas Tuke wrote in his anti-cosmetics treatise Discourse against painting and tincturing of women in 1616 on a womans painted face: And though shee bee the creature of God, as she is a woman, yet is she her owne creatisse, as a picture. This critique of artificial beauty imputed a double nature to the painted woman. The painted face addresses both God, and the woman as the artist. Challenging the relation of art and nature, Tukes reference to god was referring to picture disputes both of Late Antiquity and of Englands iconoclastic periods of the 1530s and 1640s. Face and Image analyzed the interplay of the beautification of the body, painting and complexion in terms of art theory, picture history, and history epistemology. Alongside exemplary writings on cosmetics and art theory, color recipes, literature and drama in England and Italy from 16th to 18th centuries it developed a fundamental basis of terminology and conceptual history of cosmetics writings. The study contributes to the differentiation and specification of central categories of Early Modern image- and culture theory that include natural and artificial, art, color, as well as enlivenment. Thus, Face and Image provides a foundation for the history of the artwork in the era of the emerging art markets in Europe and the beginning of the institutionalization of both physicians and artists training and of art criticism. In addition, the approach of the proposed study opens the subject of beautification thematically and methodologically to the question of Early Modern representations and practices of both image and body.