Personal beauty.

Date:
[Between 1860 and 1869?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Personal beauty. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rence of what are termed Eoman noses, lent a masculine character to it. ^Nevertheless, the ancient Romans were- ardent worshippers of female loveliness. Longspierre re¬ marks :—“ The Romans were so convinced of the power of beauty, that they used a word implying strength in place of the epithet * beautiful.* ” See Plautus’s Bacchi. The early doctors both of the Greeks and Latins did not disdain to give theifc attention to cosmetics and the preserva¬ tion of beauty. The Fathers of the Church, on the other hand, are full of anathemas fulminated against the abuses of the toilette of woman. Tertullian stigmatized as diabolical practices the arts by which certain matrons were skilful enough to redden their lips, to blanch their skin, to increase the lustre of their eyes, and the luxuriant growth of their hair. Later fathers followed in the same strain. But the Jeremiads of these Churchmen had but little effect in rendering the fair sex indifferent to the importance of beauty. On the contrary, all kinds of toilette appliances were in the greatest demand throughout the Middle Ages, many of the celebrated beauties—such as Ninon 1’Enclos— were supposed to owe much of their charms to sorcery and more co oosmatics.