'Representation'

This study explores the “beauty industry” in early modern England, setting it alongside major cultural, confessional, and aesthetic concerns of the period. Drawing on work from the material turn and second‐generation feminist art history, I examine the interaction between artistic and cosmetic arts, interpreting Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) in the context of portraits of Elizabeth I and the queen's skillful – albeit controversial and transgressive – crafting of her personal appearance and symbolism. I describe performances of gender in relation to English and European painting, arguing that early modern women adapted the practices and discourses associated with cosmetics, and in particular the perceived separation of colors and essences, to affirm their rights to create and define themselves as subjects. By reading women's works in relation to each other and to the cultural and confessional movements surrounding them, this chapter's interdisciplinary approach returns the Renaissance to the early modern.