On Fleek: Eyebrow maintenance in early modern England
In his empirical text Artificiall Embellishments, Or Arts Best Directions how to Preserve Beauty (1665), Thomas Jeamson waxes lyrical about the role of the eyebrows on a woman’s face. ‘The two Brows,’ he explains, ‘are Cupids groves of pleasure, where he shelters himself from the too violent heat of the inflaming eyes.’[1]
Indeed, much like today, eyebrows constituted an important site of beauty in early modern Europe. They were included in Italian poet Francesco Petrarca’s (1304-1374) extolment of female beauty in Il Canzoniere, who describes his muse Laura with ‘Her hair pure gold, and hot snow her face / her eyebrows ebony, her eyes twin stars.’[2] The combination of emotive metaphors and corporeal praise inspired by Petrarchism was continued by the amatory poets of early modern Europe, and the brows continued to be referenced and praised in descriptions of women’s beauty. Agnolo Firenzuola’s dialogue on female beauty, Dialogo delle bellezze delle donne (1548) provides us with an impressively specific description of the ideal pair of brows for women:
‘The line of the brow must not be absolutely flat, but curved, like a bow, so gently that it is hardly noticeable [...] we will take our example from Verdespina, who has eyebrows the colour of ebony, thin, with short, soft hairs, as if they were of fine silk. They grow gently thinner from their middle to their extremities.’[3]
I have always considered Raphael’s La Fornarina (1518) in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome, to be a fine example of Firenzuola’s ideal set of brows.
Although Firenzuola’s statement is reflective of fashions in sixteenth-century Italy, the qualities extolled - dark, bow-shaped, silky in texture - are consistent with the ideal brows in early modern England. In Cavalier poet Sir John Suckling’s play Brennoralt, or The Discontented Colonel (1639), when describing the beauty of ‘a spritely girl about fifteene’, Granivert extols her ‘Thick silken eyebrowes high upon the forehead.’[5] George Puttenham’s ‘Riddle of the Princess Paragon’ (1579), which employs Petrarchan conventions to describe Elizabeth I as the Fairy Queen, describes the Queen’s brows as ‘two bows of ebony.’[6] Thomas Hill takes a different source of inspiration in his physiognomic text The Contemplation of Mankinde, explaining that black, only slightly arched brows with a space in between are commended because these were the eyebrows sported by ‘our Saviour Jesus Christ, and the chaste virgin his mother.’[7]
But brows constituted more than ornaments of beauty. In his anatomical treatise Mikrokosmographia: a description of the body of man (1615), Helkiah Crooke outlines the belief of Ancient Greek philosopher Strato of Lampascus that ‘the soule inhabited in the eyebrows’, and that the brow was the seat of one’s pride, thus ‘we commonly say of an insolent man, that we see pride sitting upon his browe.’[8] Crooke also outlines physiognomists’ interpretations of eyebrow hairs as indicative of individuals’ character:
‘For if they bee straight it is a signe of a soft and flexible disposition; if they be inflected near the nose they are a sign of a scurrulous Buffon; if they bee inflected near the temples they argue a scoffing Parasite; if they bend all downewards they are an argument of an envious inclination.’
Similar import is placed on eyebrows in Arcandum de veritatibus et praedictionisbus astrologiae, attributed to French physician Richard Roussat and translated into English in 1562.[9] Hairy eyebrows ‘declare folyshnes of maners and mischeife’, long eyebrows indicate ‘the man to be arrogant and without shame’, and eyebrows ‘round compassed lyke a bowe, so that they ioyne almost to the nose, declare the man to be subtyll witty and studious.’ Note that in Roussat’s explanation, his subject is male. Although much of early modern amatory literature describes sets of eyebrows belonging to women, a strong browline was also an appreciated feature of a man’s visage. Indeed, in William Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well, recounting her affection for Bertram, Helena extols ‘his arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls.’
Perhaps because of the implications drawn from particularly un-ideal brows (being categorised as a ‘scurrulous Buffon’ or ‘scoffing Parasite’, for example) both men and women engaged with brow maintenance practices. However, the literature often justifies men’s modification of their browline as purely for practical means, rather than adornment. Helkiah Crooke explains that ‘in some the eyebrows grow so hairy in olde age, as that they are constrained to cut them, or else they would offend their eyes.’[10] Excessively hairy brows are also connected to the ageing process in Thomas Hill’s explanation, although he also attributes modifications to reasons of vanity, ‘in many olde persons they grow and waxe so long, that of necessity, and for comelynesse sake, they must be clypped.’[11]
Aside from clipping, early modern books of secrets and compendia of beauty recipes commonly include methods for altering the eyebrows, whether shape or colour. Means endorsed by Jeamson for blackening the brows include calcining red filberts (Corylys maxima) and mixing with goat grease, or alternatively combining maidenhair and labdanum with bear grease, before anointing the brows.[12] He also relays that many rub their brows with black lead which, one can imagine, would have been temporarily effective but permanently damaging for the health. If you have meddled with your brows too much, recipes to induce hair growth include mixing honey with burnt bees or wasps, or making an unguent of water and burnt henbane seeds. William Langham, in his herbal The garden of health (1597), prescribes regular application of dandelion juice to encourage new hair growth.[13]
The Italian book of secrets De Secreti’ del R.D. Alessio Piemontese (1555) - immensely popular across Europe, widely circulated and translated into English - includes depilatory recipes specifically for the brows, too. One simply sees the brows anointed with billy goat gall, whereas another instructs readers to cover a cloth with a heated mixture of pitch, mastic and ammoniac.[14] It is left for two-three hours then lifted off. Interestingly, this recipe is also cited in Hannah Woolley’s beauty receipt book The Ladies Physical Closet and Swiss physician Johann Jacob Wecker’s Art’s Masterpiece, or, The Beautifying Part of Physic, translated into English [15] Though in these texts the brows aren’t specified as a site for application, the repetition of the recipe suggests it was widely known as an effective means for depilation and eyebrow upkeep. These ingredients are all resins (sticky substances produced by plants), which are consistently recommended in general depilatory recipes in early modern Europe and, interestingly, still included in hair removal waxes today. In comparison to other ingredients prescribed in contemporary cosmetic recipes, they were not exceedingly expensive. In Gideon Harvey’s Family physician (1676), one pound of ammoniac cost one shilling, four pence, whereas pitch is priced at three pence.[16] The cost of mastic per pound varies from two shillings, eight pence to five shillings, four pence, depending on quality.
An example of a seventeenth-century pair of copper alloy tweezers, excavated from New Place (Shakespeare’s home from 1597).
Of course, just like today, brows could be plucked too. Thomas Jeamson reminds Artificiall Embellishments readers, ‘If the hairs on the brows grow too thick, or irregular, you may pull them up by the roots with a pair of mullets.’[17] Accordingly, the posthumous inventory of Katherine Parr’s personal effects includes a pair of twitchers of silver (tweezers), and there are several surviving examples of early modern tweezers.[18] Though he disparages the dyeing of brows, John Bulwer’s Anthropometamorphosis condones the regulation of unbridled eyebrow hairs, arguing that ‘the reducing them with Pinsers or scissers to conformity, is but a Cosmetique elegancie.’[19] He gives further instructions on acceptable tinkering:
‘To draw them into embowed Arches, is but an imitation of Nature: but to make them meet, is more than shee ever intended; but (as the Arabians doe) to paint them in a Triangular forme, is a piece of Geometry, which we cannot allow to be exercised in the Eye-brows.’
One could also pay for the service of eyebrow shaping. In the British Library’s suite of medical advertisements from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, three 1690 flyers advertise the services of women based in The Strand, St Martin’s Lane and Suffolk Street. All three promote these women’s brow-shaping abilities, the gentlewoman based on Suffolk Street promising ‘little or no pain.’[20]
[1] Thomas Jeamson, Artificiall Embellishments, Or Arts Best Directions how to Preserve Beauty Or Procure it (Oxford, Printed by William Hall, 1665), 127.
[2] ‘La testa or fino, et calda neve il volto/ebeno i cigli, et gli occhi eran due stelle’, Francesco Petrarca, The Canzoniere, or, Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta, ed. Mark Musa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 248.
[3] Translation from Agnolo Firenzuola, On the Beauty of Women (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 51.
[4] Agnolo Firenzuola, Dialogo delle bellezze delle donne (Venice: Giouan. Griffio, 1552), 32r.
[5] Sir John Suckling, The Discontented Colonel (London: Francis Eagles-field, 1642), unpaginated.
[6] George Puttenham, Partheniads (1579) in British Library MS Cotton Vespasian E.VIII, fol.171r-172v.
[7] Thomas Hill, The Contemplation of Mankinde (London: Printed by Henry Denham for William Seres, 1571), 47r.
[8] Helkiah Crooke, Mikrokosmographia: a description of the body of man (London: Printed by William Iaggard, 1615), 502-3.
[9] Richard Roussat, The most excellent, profitable, and pleasant booke of the famous doctour and expert astrologien Arcandain or Aleandrin (London: James Rowbothum, 1562), unpaginated.
[10] Crooke, Mikrokosmographia, 68-9.
[11] Hill, The Contemplation of Mankinde, 44v.
[12] Jeamson, Artificiall Embellishments, 129.
[13] William Langham, The Garden of Health (London: Christopher Barker, 1597), 187-188.
[14] Girolamo Ruscelli? De' Secreti del R.D. Alessio Piemontese (Venice: Lucio Spineda, 1603), 159v.
[15] Hannah Woolley, The Ladies Physical Closet (London: Nathan Crouch, 1672), 263; Johann Jacob Wecker, Arts masterpiece, or, The Beautifying Part of Physick (London: Nathan Brook, 1660), 76.
[16] Gideon Harvey, The Family Physician (London: Printed for T.R., 1676), 124, 125.
[17] Jeamson, Artificiall Embellishments, 128.
[18] British Library, Additional MS 46348, fols. 205-9. Printed in Janel Mueller, ed. Katherine Parr: Complete Works and Correspondence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 623.
[19] John Bulwer, Anthropometamorphoisis (London: William Hunt, 1653), 91-92.
[20] British Library, A collection of 231 advertisements, General Reference Collection 551.a.32.