The Tudor Cosmetics

The products women used in the Elizabethan era were poisonous and deadly.
Queen Elizabeth was considered to have the natural beauty of this ideal image of beauty but she loved to enhance and exaggerate the image using white makeup. Wealthy women had pale skin, and did everything they could to keep it as pale as possible. Pale skin demostrated that you are rich; if you had tanned skin it meant you were poor and worked in the sun. They used white lead or chalk mixed with egg whites, vinegar, lemon or even urine. They applied a face paint made from plant roots and leaves, too. This mixture would look like they had masks on their faces and they had to be careful not to laugh, or the 'mask' would crack. It is interesting how their make-up actually used mineral makeup; a loose powder foudation that women used as a base (primer). To redden their cheeks they used either cerise powder (white lead + red colouring), fruit juice or cochineal. Cochineal is a dye made from crushed beetles and was very expensive. Madder and vermilion (a red pigment obtained from mercury sulphide) were also used. To darken their eyelashes they used kohl which was imported from the Middle East. High foreheads were in fashion; it was considered as a sign of aristocracy and intelligence. They'd pluck their eyebrows and even shave off some of their hair to achieve this look.

"The Coronation Portrait"
Queen Elizabeth I
Artist: Richard II, in Westminster Abbey
Oil on canvas
Copy c. (1600-1610) of a lost original (c. 1559)

(source: http://heroinesofhistory.wikispaces.com/Elizabeth+I - date: Oct 9th 2014)

There are two books that I've read, Beauty and Cosmetics 1550-1950 and Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama, and both had so many interesting informations about the Elizabethan era and the cosmetics that they used. Here are some quotes that I thought were relevant for this post...

"She had survived a bout of smallpox in 1562 which reputedly left her face scarred, and this was without dubt one of the reasons for her love affair with make-up. 

...

Rouge highlighted the cheeks: red ochre gave a brownish red; brighter shades could be achieved by a white lead base dyed with red crystalline, mercuric sulphide, madder, cochineal, vermilion and alkanet root (the roots of the plant Alkanna tanctoria, which probably gave quite a deep burgundy shade as it is still used by artist for the purple lake pigment. 

...

A clear, high, aristocratic forehead remained the ideal - set off by a clear, white-as-milk complexion. Usually this was kept safely from the sun in the shadow of a gable of other headdres, and if by some misfortune the face became 'tawny' of freckled there were numerous recepies for potions that would offer to return it to fashionable pallor. White mercury mixed with white tartar and bitter almonds was recomended."

 - Downing S.J. (February 2012) Beauty and Cosmetics 1550-1950  (pages 13/14)  Shire Publication 

"...women model themselves upon the female ideal found in art and poetry: eyes like stars or the sun; a mouth like coral,rubies,vermilion; cheeks or a complexion like the moon, alabaster, lily mixed with rose, silver, glistering gold, cream or milk; blue vains in the breast like azure rivers; and teeth like pearls and ivory."

- Karim-Cooper F. (2006) Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama (page 36) Edinbourgh: Edinburgh University Press

http://www.sixwives.info/tudor-make-up.htm (Oct 8th 2014)
http://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/q-a/what-kind-of-make-up-or-cosmetics-did-the-tudor-women-use/ (Oct 8th 2014)
http://www.mylearning.org/the-painted-lady--tudor-portraits-at-the-ferens/p-2281/ (Oct 9th 2014)