Casanova and Mlle Clairon

57

Fashion Theory, Volume 7, Issue 1, pp. 5778

Reprints available directly from the Publishers.
Photocopying permitted by licence only.
2003 Berg. Printed in the United Kingdom.

Morag Martin

Morag Martin is an assistant

professor at SUNY Brockport
and a Leverhulme special
research fellow at the University
of Warwick in 20012002. She
received her doctorate at the
University of California, Irvine in
1999 for a dissertation titled
Consuming Beauty: The
Commerce of Cosmetics in
France 17501800. She is
currently working on images of
masculinity in the early
nineteenth century.

Casanova and Mlle

Clairon: Painting
the Face in a World
of Natural Fashion1
It is a quarrel of women (querelle de femmes). Men have entered the fray;
it has become almost a civil war. The philosophers of the land make
arguments for and against luxury . . . Elegant women are not without
worries . . . every day a few of them leave art to return to nature, and soon
they will not be numerous or strong enough to fight against the Insurgents.
We do not know when and how will finish this large and small affair. . .
(Affiches de Toulouse, 24 Jan. 1781: 15)
This large and small affair was the debate over the uses and abuses of
luxury at the end of the eighteenth century. The elegant women needed
to worry because their fashions of makeup and extravagant frills were

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Morag Martin

being replaced by more modest and simpler styles. Though the writer of
this ridicule, a journalist for the Affiches de Toulouse in 1781, claimed
not to know how this battle would end, he clearly favored the odds of
the Insurgents against artifice and rightly so. By the late 1770s, fashions
had begun to shift radically for the elite and respectable citizens of France
and their counterparts throughout Europe. The wig had been toppled,
the voluminous skirts shrunk, and the painted face scrubbed clean.
Fashion is dead, long live fashion.
The fashion that was to replace aristocratic artifice was the cult of the
natural. This revolution in styles had as its target not just extravagant
spending on frills but the aristocratic definition of self-hood itself. A
transparent readable face was central to the imagery of the Enlightenment.
Distinctly in opposition to the court, philosophes in salons and grub-street
journalists in cafs aimed to judge each other by self-evident means.
Transparency of meaning in texts, behavior, and self-presentation was an
essential aspect of the Enlightenment project and the physiognomists
science. The goal was to illuminate what had previously been hidden and
simplify what had previously been over-done. The word plays, innuendoes,
and masked balls of the Old Regime elites were to be replaced by frank
discussions, simple emotions, and polite soires. The made-up face was
to be purified.
In this realm of Enlightenment transparency, a clear and seemingly easy
to monitor line was drawn between natural, and thus pure beauty, and
artificial veneers achieved through wearing makeup and powdered wigs.
These masks of paint represented the layers of aristocratic deceit that
would keep the wearer from being able to enter the tasteful public sphere
on an equal footing. At first playful and light, these criticisms grew more
and more vehement as the century wore on. By the end of the century
moral apologists for fashion were few (Roche 1989: 491). Attacks on
luxurious fashions, cosmetics included, were increasingly meant to question
the rights of aristocrats and royalty, undermining Old Regime symbols
of power (Shovlin 2000: 588).
In turn, as Robert Jones has argued, this new definition of fashion and
good taste helped legitimate respectable bourgeois society (Jones 1998:
45). To join this tasteful elite, women and men were encouraged to give
up wearing aesthetically unpleasing layers of paint. Femininity was the
main means of physically representing good taste due to its association
with purity and sensibility. External traits were essential signs by which
society could monitor womens moral character. Women were to be treated
with respect and reverence only as long as they embodied through their
physical beauty the virtues of gentleness and sensibility (Goodman 1994:
6). The new meaning of beauty by the end of the eighteenth century
excluded masculine traits. In this world, layers of paint were not only
unfashionable but distinct sign of corruption, hiding sins and causing
immoral behavior. They had to be eradicated so that both sexes true
natures could shine forth (Martin 1999: ch. 3).

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Criticizing artifice was fairly straightforward. Replacing it with a new

aesthetic of beauty that represented moral purity was an altogether
more complicated matter. Those who saw themselves as the bearers of
the new taste deployed definitions based on concerns with naturalness
and simplicity. Historians, for the most part not interested in the details
of cosmetic culture, have assumed that these definitions triumphed and
that the public of consumers followed along willingly, throwing away their
pots and brushes to enter into the new elite. Concretely defining good taste
and then influencing the respectable public to adopt these new styles was
not so easily accomplished. The newly naturalized and purified body was
an amorphous entity whose signs and meanings were much less simple
to pin down than the regulated extravagances of court dress. Aristocratic
makeup, which implied rouge, white face paint and powder, may have
been discredited but the model of natural good taste that was meant to
replace it left women and men with a highly malleable sphere in which
to display and create their own sense of beauty and self.
Unlike clothing that changed in style frequently, cosmetics in the
eighteenth century helped create a stable protection for the highly vulnerable face. The ravages of disease and time were pressing concerns for
eighteenth-century urban men and women. Studying the clash that occurred between these demands and the growing criticisms of artifice allows
for a greater understanding of how men and women constructed their
physical identities in both public and private spaces. Yet, accessing individual responses to these changes in cosmetic use is an incredibly difficult
task. Most commentators on cosmetics berated the habits of those around
them, distancing themselves from the stigma of paint. Memoirs and letters,
though more personal, hardly ever discussed the daily practices of the
toilette. There are a few exceptions, however, that can prove useful in
examining responses to changing aesthetics of beauty. Due to their focus
on feminine vanity and performance, the memoirs of Mlle Clairon (1723
1803), an actress at the Comdie Franaise, provide insight into how
women coped with the expectations of natural beauty. Clairon specifically
evoked her method of painting to defend her reputation as actress and
mistress. The memoirs of Giacomo Casanova de Seingalt (17251798)
are a vast treasure of commentary not only on what he found attractive
in women, but on his own grooming rituals. In eight volumes, covering
his youth to middle-age, Casanova commented on the interplay between
artifice and nature, seduction and attraction.
Casanova and Clairon cannot be seen as representative of everyday
beauty practices. As an actress and a libertine, their public and private
lives were extravagant and their use of artifice was accordingly more
pressing. What they do provide is an illustration of the complications
inherent in any radical redefinition of beauty standards. Despite being
most comfortable in a world of high luxury and pomp, both accepted and
even championed the changes touted by Enlightenment ideals of nature.
Yet, due to their occupations and personal inclinations, they molded their

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own definitions of naturalized beauty to include a conscious use of artifice.

This artifice separates them firmly from the critics of cosmetics whose
prescriptions were neither realizable nor desirable.

Clairons Physiognomy: Articulating the Painted Face

Critics of face paint were especially concerned with the dangers of makeup
for young innocent women. Paint had two intermixed and seditious
properties: it transformed pretty girls into ugly society ladies and in doing
so it encouraged promiscuous pastimes such as gambling, flirting, and
drinking. The layer of face paint and the artificial rouge allowed aging
coquettes to put on the blush of innocence while initiating younger fashion
victims to these manipulative games. Makeup was both a sign of social
corruption and a cause of that corruption. The spaces in which female
immorality thrived were not limited to aristocrats, but spanned a variety
of social classes. Actresses, prostitutes and queens, all professions that
demanded large amounts of face paint, symbolized the height of fakery
and disintegrating morality. Their masks were grotesque attempts to hide
what was underneath: the empty rotting corpse of the impure woman and
the symbolic disintegration of French society.
The eighteenth-century theater was an arena in which respectable
women and prostitutes intermingled, and the women on stage played both
roles. Claire Joseph Hippolyte Leris, or Mlle Clairon, was at the height
of her career a much-lauded actress of tragedy on the Parisian stage. Yet,
as a member of a highly questionable class, she was always under close
scrutiny for her many affairs and youthful indiscretions. In her memoirs,
written from 1790 to 1792, Clairon attempted to justify her position in
society, establishing herself as a respectable practitioner of the art, one
whose experiences should be followed by young women wanting to act.
She de-emphasized the importance played by beauty in her professional
life to ensure her memory as an innovative artist rather than an immoral
coquette. Yet her comments on her personal life stressed the all-consuming
role of the toilette for her self-confidence.
In eighteenth-century literature innocent girls were easily transformed
into actresses and, when their looks faded, prostitutes. In Nougarets
Dangers de la sduction, the heroine, Lucette, gave way to the barrage
of attention by her suitors, blushing profusely as she recognized her own
charms. Her adoption of rouge to cover her emotions marked the first
step from innocent maid to coquette. Lucettes love for attention led her
to join the theater and gain wealthy admirers. Upon contracting syphilis,
however, she lost her lover, her employment, and her beauty. She found
herself forced into the hands of whores who dressed her in rouge,
paint, fake hips and breasts to prepare her for her new line of work.
The excesses of cosmetics were clearly linked to this descent into sin,
having a central role in the unnatural worlds of both theater and brothel
(Nougaret 1796, vol. II: 72, 38, 52).

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61

A similar tale can be found in the Histoire de Mlle Cronel, a fictionalized

version of Clairons life as a young actress in Rouen. Recounting her affairs
in pornographic detail, these memoirs emphasized that acting was always
a secondary profession for pretty, sexually voracious, indigent women.
Groomed by her mother in the seduction of men, Cronel joined a theater
troupe in order to gain multiple admirers whose gifts of clothing and
jewelry were substitutes for hard cash. She used multiple forms of artifice
to trick her suitors into thinking her innocent and faithful. A magic potion
to recreate virginity and skillful application of makeup repaired her
previous escapades so that every man felt he was the first. Her ability to
act convincingly outside the stage, however, was uncovered by a philosophe
who employed empirical data and enlightened reasoning to expose her
tricks to her blind lovers. As the Enlightened male, the philosopher/author
underlined the doomed nature of artificial identities, allowing Cronel to
continue her escapades for purposes of titillation but never giving her the
satisfaction of long-term financial or amorous success (Gaillard de la
Bataille 1772, vol. I: 14, 17, 59).
This purported memoir was meant to impede Clairons passage from
soubrette to serious actress. Clairon was well known in Rouen and
Lyon for her multiple adventures, even attracting police attention for her
dalliances with the military (Goncourt 1889: 21). When she moved to
Paris, looking for greater fame, she was criticized for joining the Opera,
the bastion of pure and less made-up graces. One of her compatriots
accused Clairon of degrading the profession, calling upon her to remain
in the Opera Comique where improper behavior was the norm (Mmoire
pour le sieur de La Noue: 7, 19). The author of an early biography claimed
that she paid for her pretty face . . . and her petite stature, which caused
men to stigmatize her as a coquette and forced her to live a voluptuous
life in order to succeed financially and professionally (Lemontey 1823:
2).
Clairons admittance into the Comdie Franaise in 1743 was a threat
to both the other actresses respectability and the safety of the female
audience. Due to her prominent position on stage she had the power to
unduly influence the audience, who might not be aware of her past
behavior. Because actresses had a public presence, they often started trends
in fashion. Critics bemoaned that the fashion of wearing rouge in large
dabs (en placage) was adopted by respectable women for daily wear.
Ladies might copy a stylish bonnet worn by a famous actress but they
needed to be warned from taking this fashion too far. A letter writer in
the Journal des dames was shocked that women might stoop to the level
of base actresses in the desire to please a crowd of unknown spectators
(Journal des dames June 1761: 2812). To be compared with an actress
was as insulting as being likened to a prostitute. The Duchess de Berry
was told that as first lady of the land, she ought to have a little more
gravity than to wearing the beauty-marks of an actress in the theatre,
while Marie-Antoinette was harshly criticized by her own mother for

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looking more like an actress than a French queen (Douainire de B . . .

1845, vol. IV: 333; Pillivuyt 1985: 58).
Clairon realized the dangers of these associations, especially when
linked to her past. She wanted to be remembered as the actress who had
revolutionized the way costumes and makeup were worn in the theater,
rather than starting fashionable trends and society gossip. Her memoirs
emphasized how she transformed the presentation of tragedy and in doing
so disassociated the theater from the realm of artifice. Despite great success
in classic roles such as Phdre in the 1740s, Clairon stated that she spent
the first ten years of her Parisian career studying physiognomy and history
in order to create a new, more authentic style of acting (Clairon 1822:
72). She emphasized the historicity and background of her roles. She took
lessons in anatomy and collected anatomical models to better understand
facial expressions, hoping to act in a reasonable style (Lemontey 1823:
5). Marmontel, her lover and friend, claimed he encouraged her to try a
more realistic and simple style of declamation, rather than the highly
mannered speaking style favored by Voltaire (Marmontel 1999: 176).
In 1753, she debuted this new dramatic style in Bordeaux (afraid of
Parisian critics) to great acclaim. The years of study had created a Clairon
who was nature itself, as good as the imagination can paint for you
(Marmontel 1999: 239).2 Not only was her speech more flowing, but she
had also adapted the costumes to fit the historical period or role. Costumes
at the Comdie Franaise were versions of fashionable court dress: a maid
might wear a more ornate pannier dress and wig than her mistress.
Clarions new Roxane wore a sultanas dress and her Electra wore no
rouge and gave up the traditional pink frills for a black slaves dress
(Arnault 1861: 55). Diderot praised this innovation, hoping that all the
other curled and made-up dolls would soon become dressed like her
by nature and truth (Goncourt 1889: 78).
The reformation of costume implied a reworking of face paint as well.
The thick layers of paint traditionally worn in the theater made it difficult
for actors to express a range of subtle emotions. Clairon argued that face
paint absorbed the physiognomy, making the precious mobility of facial
muscles disappear . . . (Clairon 1822: 2645). Theater critics agreed,
arguing that it keeps us from glimpsing changes in coloring, which, in
nature make the strongest impression on us (Chamfort and de la Porte
1776, vol. II: 188). Her new use of paint was to be either minimal or nonexistent, depending on the role she played. It no longer was meant to
recreate eighteenth-century concepts of beauty and fashion. What she
advocated was well-researched characters whose traits were visible to the
audience and whose use of makeup highlighted emotions rather than hid
them. Intrinsically tied to the pseudo-science of physiognomy, for Clairon
the pure face was at its heart a rendition of the soul, an emotional representation on a physical surface. Artificiality was the bane of a trained
physiognomist as it stood in the way of a legible reading. As the physiognomist Pernety argued, to learn how to know men (and women) by the

Casanova and Mlle Clairon

63

traits of their faces one must first tear off this perfidious mask, leaving
only to the one who wore it the shame of having used it (Pernety 1776,
vol. I: preface, 44). For the most direct access to a characters motivations,
in life and on the stage, the physical mask of paint had to be discarded.
Clairons emphasis on a naturalized and authentic physiognomy in the
artificial world of the theater was a deliberate act. Clairon was attempting
to bring to life the roles she played, erecting the fourth wall to better
enchant and seduce her audience. As an actress, she never relied on instinct
and emotion as did her rival Mlle Dumesnil (Rougemont 1988: 11618).
Dumesnil was known for her complete lack of artifice, rejecting Clairons
scientific studies and reasoned approach (Dumesnil 1799: 3, 19). Yet,
Clairon was praised for creating more authentic roles, ones that came
out of controlled artifice. Her roles were so well thought-out that some
critics found her too mannered and unemotional (Williams 1905: 297).
Others, such as Diderot, saw her mastery over her physical traits as a
brilliant recreation of real emotions (Diderot 1966: 148; Percival 1999:
1401). Makeup, as the ultimate of artifice, functioned as an aspect of
this recreated reality on stage, a justifiable means of forming a full character, rather than a statement of fashion.
Clairons revolution in costume and makeup was not all that it seemed.
She never truly gave up graceful and flattering dresses or the complete
disavowal of fashionable principles of beauty.3 Her erasure of masks
mimicked closely the naturalized conception of beauty advocated by
critics of makeup, but her continued emphasis on the artificial construct
of authentic characters allowed for greater flexibility in the use of fard.
This flexibility was most apparent in her personal life. In her fifties, she
bluntly explained to her lovers wife that he preferred her because I wear
rouge, which gives me a younger and gayer look, and you are of such
paleness as to squelch all possible desire (Clairon 1822: 128). Meant as
sympathetic words of advice, she promoted the use of rouge to imitate
attractiveness expected by men to come naturally. She understood the
association of artifice and sexuality: the blush on the cheek could represent
arousal rather than purity in the aging wife. Instead of keeping her beauty
secrets to herself, she wished to share them with her rival, hoping they
could become friends who adopted similar means of attracting their mans
attention.
In believing that rouge could enhance attractiveness and create the
possibility for solidarity between women, Clairon was positing a very
different model of personal cosmetic use than was commonly described
by male commentators. For men, cosmetics functioned as a means of competition between women, causing the wearer to enter a world of feminine
rivalry and pettiness. Women were accused of consciously degrading their
natural beauty to top each other, rather than attempting to please men
(Bractole 1788: 148). Critics of the aristocratic lifestyle blamed society
for dictating that beauty and attractiveness be sacrificed to the whim of
fashion. All women of standing, regardless of the consequences, had to

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enthusiastically adopt the mask of paint. A frivolous coquette could not

stand the presence of a prettier woman who had no need for rouge, so
she tried to coerce and humiliate her into applying as much artifice as
herself (Barthe 1769: 52). Even a mother could be jealous of her daughter
whose presence destroys everything as soon she is near me, I feel uglier
when I see her. And her youth and simple nature do more than all my art,
my attentions and my attire (Quinault 1769: 31).
Critics asserted that artifice was invented by old age and ugliness
to confuse youth with the age of disgust (Babillard 1778, vol. III:
289). The end to attractiveness came early in the eighteenth century.
Marie-Antoinette was said to invite only young women to her dinners
since she did not conceive of how past thirty, a woman would dare appear
in court (Douanire de B . . . 1845, vol. IV: 336). Older women were
meant to retire peacefully and not try to outdo their prettier daughters
and granddaughters. Casanova found himself disgusted when faced by a
woman of sixty who still plastered her face (Casanova 1900, vol. II: 324).
Madame de Genlis had a similar reaction when she visited her grandmother the Marquise de la Haye, calling her continued use of rouge and
paint hardly respectable (Genlis 1829, vol. I: 274). The aging aristocrat
who stubbornly continued to wear paint was antithetical to social interactions based on vitality, charm, and youth. Old women who wore
cosmetics were sometimes pitied but more often laughed at as frivolous
creatures unaware of their own blind vanity.
Clairon fully understood the pressures of aging, which were integral
to both her professional and personal life. She asserted that past thirty
men defined women as old, though she herself extended that limit (Clairon
1822: 203). When she spotted her first wrinkles in the mirror at age forty,
she simplified her dress and makeup, hoping to hold on to her lovers
affections with virtues rather than physical attraction. She was aware of
the dangers of vanity, which would keep an aging coquette from seeing
the ravages of daily life. Her advice to women reading her memoirs was
to accept the respectable roles assigned to each age without complaint
(Clairon 1822: 23). The proper role for a woman in her forties was not
on the stage. She retired from the Comdie Franaise in 1765 at age fortythree for political reasons. She continued to act privately, both hoping for
a return to her past glory while realizing that this wish was futile. Her
aging was a shock to some of her admirers: at a royal performance in
1770, she was described as shriveled and wearing an utterly unattractive
yellow gown (Goncourt 1889: 174).
By age fifty, even with her continued use of rouge, Clairon felt that only
wit and character could gain her the affection of men. Forced by debts,
she sold her collection of art and artifacts and moved to Germany to
dedicate herself to her lover, the Margrave of Anspach. Despite her efforts
to help him expand his political and social reputation, he left her after
seventeen years for a younger woman, the Countess of Craven. She
understood the attractions of her rival, but felt that his rejection showed

Casanova and Mlle Clairon

65

Figure 1
Folly clothing decrepitude in
the accessories of youth.
Charles Coypel, engraved by
L. Surugue, 1745. Bibliothque
Nationale de France, Paris

no respect for her age and infirmity. She blamed him and other men for
having unreasonable expectations of womens beauty, but understood that
it had not been her fading looks that kept him faithful for so long. What
Clairon wanted was respect for her position, rather than desire. But by
adopting the role of mistress she had no recourse when her lovers chose
to give her neither. Yet, she saw no solution for the woes of the aging
actress in marriage. She claimed she never wed because men automatically
based their love on beauty, and when this beauty faded one rarely finds
qualities that can console one of its loss (Clairon 1822: 165).
Clairon made public a professional and personal life defined by talent
and youthful beauty, but a retirement defined by solitary literary pastimes.
She attempted to erase her reputation as a nymphomaniac in her youth
and her continued passions well into old age by her morally respectable
memoirs.4 This rewriting of her life was successful. In the early nineteenth
century the Journal des dames et des modes reprinted a section of her
memoirs as advice to young girls (Journal des dames et des modes Feb.
1808: 52). Jennifer Jones has shown that fashion magazines of the late
eighteenth century adopted the new naturalized fashion bereft of
frills and artifice but no less expensive and changing than the previous

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aristocratic model (Jones 1994: 963). What Clairons advice in the Journal
des dames et des modes postulated was the transformation of both cosmetics and actresses as respectable role models for this new fashion. She
taught readers through her life story that youthful natural beauty
accentuated with light rouge was a necessary part of social integration,
but attempts to cover the lines of aging were self-deceiving and frivolous,
linked to the aesthetics of an Old Regime theatrical world.
This interplay between natural good looks and cosmetics could only
be acknowledged by Clairon in her role as advisor to younger women,
not as a user herself. Clairons life and her whitewashed memoirs stressed
the ascendancy of a naturalized, authentic face aided by subtle artifice,
in both theater and life. Yet her actions and attempts to remain loved and
attractive into her sixties indicate the malleability of these categories. The
authenticity she sought in the theater was in constant clash with her
obsession with attractiveness as defined by eighteenth-century fashion.
Though she tried to redefine the role of mistress to focus on her character,
as Mme de Pompadour did more successfully, she failed to gain any
stability for a persona that she had based on her physical traits.5 For this
she blamed her entourage: the society that could not accept older women
and the men who rejected her fading looks. She defined her roles in life
as a series of theatrical performances that she had successfully pulled off:
virtuous soubrette, authentic tragedian and respectable mistress. Her last
role was as an elderly matron who offered advice to young girls on how
to navigate between the pull of vanity and the realities of aging. She died
in 1803 poor and alone. As a tragic actress she could never fully escape
the well-known role of the doomed and discarded mistress.
Though Clairon tried to overcome the expectations of a naturalized
and moral beauty, she realized the limitations of her own acting. These
expectations put women into untenable positions. Women who adopted
makeup for reasons of fashion or profession were associated with its sinful
taint. Older women who attempted to hide their age were to be relegated
to private spaces, away from social scrutiny. Even those perceived to be
young and beautiful were burdened with the task of being and acting
natural at all times, and thus readable to their male companions. The
physiognomists feminine ideal was beautiful through her innate characteristics: her youth, purity, and freshness, traits that could not and would
not come into contact with the immoral practices of the toilette. Clairon
could adhere to physiognomys criteria for acting, but she could never
fulfill its criteria for living.

Casanovas Natural: The Seduction of the Painted Face

The ideal of youthful naturalized beauty that Clairon posited for the stage
in the 1750s was in full vogue in the salons of fashionable society by the
1770s. Women were giving up the thick layers of cosmetics and adopting

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67

simpler styles of dress and behavior. The emphasis was on the transparent,
readable face, cleansed of its layers of deceit. Late-eighteenth-century
philosophes emphasized the subjective and individual nature of beauty.
Yet this beauty had to be pure and unconscious to be of any value. The
je ne sais quoi desired in a woman was based on conceptions of naturalized traits, representing not coquetry but interior purity and simplicity,
with not a beauty patch or pot of rouge in sight. Casanovas memoirs,
first published in abridged form in 1797, offer an overwhelming array
of young, pretty and willing women to parade their charms in front of
the reader. Written in his seventies while the librarian to the Count of
Lamberg in Dux, the memoirs reflect his nostalgia for a past long gone.
His main focus was on a period of sumptuous artifice, the 174060s. Yet,
as he remembered these events, the transformation in fashion and aesthetics
that had taken place during his lifetime took the ascendant. Casanovas
women wore cosmetics (as all upper-class women did well into the 1770s)
but his idealized vision of their beauty was firmly anchored in a naturalized model. As a lover of women, he prided himself in being able to identify
real beauty from the false one created by artifice.
The clearest definition of the new beauty was in what it was not. It
was not the painted face of the coquette or the foolish attempts of any
aging mistress, like Clairon, to hide her faults. It was not the layers of
paint and powder necessitated in court visits, transforming all men and
women into prematurely aged clones. Critics of cosmetics emphasized the
simplicity and innocence of youth as representative of feminine beauty.
Men demanded to see the fruits of their seduction, the unadulterated blush
that spread across a womans cheeks. The beauty without fard, young
by definition, was immortalized in countless poems: Worthy student of
nature/Your game, your charm owe nothing to art/You draw your pure
expression from your heart/These sentiments without study and without
artifice . . . (Journal des dames Dec 1764: 6). For Casanova, and many
others, it was clear that a woman was at her most ravishing at the
moment when she comes out of the arms of sleep rather than at her
toilette (Casanova 1900, vol I: 494). This glimpse of unmediated beauty
implied sexual fulfillment within the realm of the pure and new. A womans
beauty was at its height as the dawn broke, coloring her cheeks with the
innocent blush.
This simple charm of the new natural woman belonged above all in
the countryside, in opposition to the urban debaucheries of the aristocracy: a few ribbons, the crook of a country shepherdess forms the
complete dress (Mercure Jan 1769: 223). The solution to the rampant
luxury and artifice of the Old Regime was a return to rural values, which
included hard work, healthy living, and Rousseaus promotion of breastfeeding. An extreme example of pastoral seduction was Marie-Antoinettes
dress-up as a milkmaid in her hameau at Versailles. The women of France
were entreated to follow their queen, and by the adoption of the dress
of a shepherdess, . . . [they] will see that only nature should dress [them]

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(Favre 1779: 489). Casanova bemoaned the transformation of one of

his conquests from naive country girl to sophisticated urbanite. He found
that her powdered hair-do was not worth as much as her luscious ebony
mane and her ladys dress much less arousing than that of a rich peasant
(Casanova 1900, vol. II: 113).
Yet he critiqued another peasant girl for having a tanned face, an
attribute he did not find appealing (Casanova 1900, vol. II: 152). It was
not the ruddy complexion of a milkmaid that critics of cosmetics touted,
but the same creamy skin and red cheeks that had been the desired effect
of rouge and paint. In this rural setting, innocent beauties were supposed
to be adorned with all the graces which nature can embellish its masterpiece . . . this tender red that colors the open rose is no more vivid, more
splendid than that which is spread on her cheeks (Delacroix 1796: 175).
Critics of makeup did not reject the dominant aesthetic of beauty, but
rather the means by which this beauty was acquired. Red lips and cheeks
should come from innocent blushing and not from dabs of rouge (Prvost
1784: 365). Thus, the turn to natural beauty was an attempt to free young
beauties from the tyranny of artifice, while nonetheless reinforcing these
same expectations.
In demanding a strict avoidance of worldly practices of beauty, critics
of fashion hoped for an unconscious beauty. Women had to comport
themselves with charm found in nature; what nature gives is the sole
ornament, what one adds is a costume . . . (Journal de Paris 1779: 187).
Young women were asked to be impervious of their beauty and their
own innocent seduction. Yet, for most critics of cosmetics, this purity of
spirit should still include conscious attempts to attract men. In Emile,
Rousseaus Sophie was
simplicity joined with elegance . . . There is no other young person
who seems dressed with less affectation and whose attire is more
studied; not an item of hers is chosen haphazardly, and art appears
in none of them.
Rousseau believed in educating young women to act charming and innocent, seeing no contradiction in studied artlessness (Rousseau 1961:
498, 465).
For Casanova, this theatrical authenticity was directly linked to his
process of sexual fulfillment. In his women, he wanted a semblance of
nature without necessitating that it actually was natural, since nature itself
did not always please. His partners had to exude naivety and passion;
they had to blush with shame as they performed the most unmentionable
acts. In love, conversation, and physical display a mistress was so ugly
when you are not natural! And you are a masterpiece of art when you
manage the perfect imitation (Casanova 1900, vol. II: 104). Unlike
Rousseau, Casanova placed the artful recreation of nature at the summit
of feminine performance, allowing him to consider makeup as part of that

Casanova and Mlle Clairon

69

performance. The natural was an illusive quest, whose perfect imitation

through art was to be the goal of the made-up woman.
Yet, men did not want to be able to discern this construction of natural
beauty. Childlike innocence that hid from the viewer its artificial constructs was the main aim of all women. Once achieved, this state of artful
nature became the height of femininity. Similarly to Clairons stagings,
artifice was to be used by women for the benefit of heightened authenticity
rather than for the creation of imaginary worlds. And since it was obvious
to these critics that womens ultimate goal should be to please men, then
it was not out of line for them to give advice and pronounce on the
manner by which we wish they would offer themselves (Boudier de
Villemert 1759: 119). For Casanova this translated into buying his
mistresses clothing and cosmetics (Casanova 1900, vol. II: 56). Each man
had the right to reorganize the contents of his lovers toilette, a site that
had previously been shrouded with feminine mystery. In this redefinition
of beauty, men performed the role of both painter and voyeur, wanting
to control the visual stimulus that would (at least for Casanova) lead to
physical consummation.
One of the prescriptions most male critics gave to women was to ban
all use of makeup, preferring more subtle illusions. Their main weapon
against the use of paint was its intrinsic ugliness and inability to reproduce
real beauty. As one commentator righteously noted if [women] claim
to please men by the help of the rouge and paint that they wear with so
much profusion, they deceive themselves (Vaultier 1937: 115). Casanova
agreed that women who used makeup for seduction were ridiculous and
false. Yet, he differed from many of his contemporaries by admitting that
art easily manages to hide the imperfections of the face, and even can
simulate beauty (Casanova 1900, vol. VIII: 256). Women who used
makeup properly could make themselves passable in public and even
seduce men with their false veneers.
Casanova understood that it was this ability to deceive men that
made cosmetics most threatening to the system of naturalized beauty.
Makeup was a weapon women used to destabilize the opposite sex. For
men, what was underneath the mask of paint was often much more
frightening than the mask itself. Innocent men had to be taught to be
on their guard against the false masks of vile or homely women who
planned to corrupt their suitors as well as deceive them. Casanova was
surprised that so many French people hid under a mask that changed
their nature. The French, on the other hand, were more perturbed
by what might be underneath (Casanova 1900, vol. II: 295). For the
French symbolic or cosmetic masks mirrored fears about the real face or
personality. The late-eighteenth-century triumph of transparency responded
to this fear of hidden terrors by ripping off the mask, exposing all coquettes,
brigands, and cads for what they truly were.
Casanova may have preferred to see things as they truly were, but he
did not feel intimidated by masks. For him cosmetics were neither a sign

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Morag Martin

of deceit nor inner corruption but part of a more complex interplay

between artifice and nature. He felt perfectly at ease removing and exchanging the masks, whether they were his or his conquests, as long as a stable
identity was ultimately uncovered. Because he was willing to play with
these layers of identity and meaning, Casanova did not find them threatening to his own masculinity. Instead, he found great pleasure in the
game of divining what was underneath the layers. Casanova described
the process of unveiling a womans painted face as similar to reading a
book, whose cover might presage, much like his own memoirs, literary
masterpiece or pornographic tripe. He argued that men who had seen too
many naturally beautiful women were blas and became curious to browse
through the possibilities offered elsewhere. Women who wore makeup,
with its implication of sin and decrepitude, thus inflamed a seducers
passions. Men hoped that the work is worth more than the title, and
the reality more than the makeup that hides it. Unfortunately for the
seducer, female coquettishness often kept them from being able to peruse
these works of literature freely (Casanova 1900, vol. I: 1912). Since most
of these women were mediocre beauties, this failure was not consequential,
and as he well knew, the attempt often brought greater pleasure than the
conquest.
For Casanova makeup was a necessary part of seduction. Peeling off
the mask went hand in hand with physical possession. But for makeup
to be truly successful it had to highlight the treasures underneath, to reflect
the natural beauty within. If pretty young women willingly exhibited their
natural charms, through a slow process of participatory seduction, then
the function of their made-up faces was justified and desirable to men.
In this way, he justified the ritual of the toilette. At their public toilettes,
coquettes transformed themselves from bedroom beauties to society ladies.
The public act of remaking the face performed for male admirers functioned as titillating foreplay, promising to later uncover what was being
cleverly masked. The art of artifice became intrinsically tied to the promise
of sensual unveiling, which was Casanovas preferred moment. In this
private act, the painted-on naivety represented by the blush of the rouge
could be scrubbed clean to reveal a truly virtuous maiden who could
be turned into an experienced seductress by his caresses. The makeup
represented decorum and lust, a combination necessary to his pleasure.
Strict admonitions to purify the face had no place in Casanovas playful
sense of visual and sexual pleasures available through paint. In this way,
he both exemplified the new ethos of the natural while accepting the
previous model of the coquette in favor during in his youth. Casanova
depicted himself as a man capable of coping with the surprises inherent
in the game of seduction as played by the coquette, yet he always yearned
for authentic purity. His contradictory desires led to frustrations when
women did not turn out to be what they seemed. He was crushed to find
a seemingly virtuous beauty to be an experienced libertine (Casanova
1900, vol. VIII: 351). When he found himself falling for the young

Casanova and Mlle Clairon

71

transvestite castrato Bellino, he felt threatened by this lack of stable

identity. Despite the young boys act of deceit, he found him to be of
unmade-up beauty and thus obviously an authentic female. In the end,
things turned out as they do in most eighteenth-century stories, the young
man was in fact a girl and Casanovas desire was legitimated and consummated. The blurring of gender lines through paint and costume was
amusing when done in jest and removable, but threatening when artifice
truly tricked the imagination and senses (Casanova 1900, vol. I: 32933,
3418).
Casanovas disappointment and petulant behavior when women (or
men) strayed from his script led to his lifelong search for newness and
youth. He claimed to have never married because the women he loved
had a glaring fault: vanity that led to the use of cosmetics. With this artifice
women could try to trick him into seeming to be what he desired. He
jokingly claimed to want to marry only a black-eyed girl, but knew that
today, almost all girls have learnt the secret of dyeing their eyes, but I
will not be tricked, as I know the game (Casanova 1900, vol. II: 82).
Casanovas discourse on makeup posited a world in which women deceived
innocent men by giving them what they wanted. The disturbing image
of artificial eye color (available only in the late twentieth century) evoked
desire rather than repulsion, even for a man who claimed to know the
game. Casanova welcomed the onslaught of artificial wiles used by the
young beauties he could not get on without.
Casanovas memoirs posited a world in which natural youthful beauty
dominated the aesthetic sphere. Makeup was not erased from this sphere,
but functioned as an anticipatory sign of that beauty, though not always
a reliable one. In many ways, Casanovas retelling of the women of his
youth in the 1740s and 1750s resembled the dominant trope of the
frivolous coquette from that period. Yet, the elderly writer infused his
memories with a distinct preference for the newer fashions of simplicity
and purity. His criticisms of cosmetics support those of countless other
critics, who had won this war of words by the 1780s. Where Casanova
differed from these critics was that he did not see the social use of paint
as threatening, but rather as only potentially embarrassing for old and
ugly women. Younger women forced by social conventions to don makeup
presented an added level of challenge; stripping them of this mask was
as revealing and titillating as stripping them of their clothing. Rather than
seeing rouge and face paint as a sign of interior corruption, he saw it as
an invitation to seduction. This invitation was to be perpetual, a recurring
striptease that necessitated the continued usage of paint by women in
public. Casanova allowed women their vanity, their toilette tables and
their pots as long as these accessories to their femininity allowed him to
gain pleasure and not financial or emotional responsibility.
The expectations Casanova had of womens attractiveness and artifice
were intrinsically tied to his own sense of vanity. Though described by
contemporaries as ugly and without taste, worldly graces or savoir

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Morag Martin

vivre, Casanova focused much energy on his grooming (Ligne 1967:

495). He very clearly wanted the women he flirted with to be attracted
to him physically as well as emotionally. In this way he differed radically
from those who wished to separate men from the practices of beautification. The growing climate of biological gender, which defined men and
womens sexual organs as opposites rather than on a continuum, did not
allow men to primp and wear makeup (Lacqueur 1990). The shared
pastimes of the past were replaced by stricter divisions between feminine
and masculine activities: men were no longer to wear rouge, wigs were
abandoned and the male toilette was abridged to purely hygienic functions. As the century progressed men who continued to primp were accused
of being petit matres, an increasingly insulting title. Despite evidence that
men continued to purchase cosmetics, those who adopted artifice found
themselves no longer in favor (Martin 1999: ch. 1). Outside court circles,
the new version of masculinity stressed simplicity of dress and more
importantly a retreat from notions of male beauty. The new man was to
be a man due to his rough features, not despite them.
Critics feared that men who wore cosmetics would eventually become
indistinguishable from women. This ridiculous feminization of men,
encouraged by social mores, led to their weakening and eventually to their
loss of identity to the voracious women of society. Powerful women, such
as Mme de Pompadour, were rumored to control politics, since fashionable men have brains and almost faces and figures of women (Bractole
1788: 151). Feminized aristocratic men could no longer rule over society
or expect their social inferiors to follow them. Painted men were also
feared because they undermined the ideal of social transparency in the
public sphere. Their effeminacy made them aberrations of nature who
threatened the division between the sexes (Mercier 1979, vol. I: 98).
In Casanovas youth, however, powdered wigs, rouge, face paint and
especially perfumes had been acceptable and even a necessary aspects of
court society (Sobry 1786: 41920). By the early eighteenth century, men
had begun to spend much time and effort making themselves clean and
well dressed (De La Salle 1714: 1920). Casanova was no exception.
He was inordinately proud of his luxurious mane and what he saw as his
overall good looks, spending a great deal of time and money on his toilette.
He wore so much powder and cream that a local abbot threatened him
with excommunication. Casanova demured, insisting that he did not wear
any more paint than the stereotypical church father. In revenge, the abbot
(with the help of a jealous brother) crept into Casanovas bedroom one
night and hacked off his beautiful locks, forcing the young man to don a
wig (Casanova 1900, vol. I: 856).
Casanovas first punishment for vanity only led him to don greater
forms of artifice. Masculine seduction was impossible without hair, real
or false. The grooming of the wig became important to his self-worth and
public persona. He awaited his hairdressers visits in order to face his
public. After a night of seduction, he needed to create a presentable

Casanova and Mlle Clairon

73

Figure 2
Le Petit Maitre. Bibliothque
Nationale de France, Paris.
This engraving alludes to both
the rediculous nature of the
petit matre and the dangers
of vanity for men such as
Casanova

figure for entry into the salon the next morning (Casanova 1900, vol. I:
293). Unlike many men of the period, Casanova never adopted the
practice of shaving his head to position the wig better. He used the hair
he had left as part of his grooming, attaching it to his toupee, quite proud
of his beautiful locks (Casanova 1900, vol. I: 88, 434). A man with a
shaved head evoked a balding crown, while a man with a hidden shock
of natural hair displayed masculine vigor. This vanity was only seen by
the women he seduced, a sign of their unique position and of his authenticity. Casanovas relationship to his own beauty and use of artifice
depended on the same revelation of natural traits he expected from his
conquests. He may have preferred the ideals of natural beauty in private,
but he continued to adhere to the protection of wig and powder in public
throughout his lifetime. By the time mens wigs went out of fashion in
the 1780s, he would not have had enough of his own hair left to publicly
display his once beautiful locks.
Casanovas vanity, like Clairons, led to frustration and incomprehension towards the process of aging. Casanova would not continue his
memoirs past age fifty, commenting to a friend that I begin to laugh when
looking at myself in the mirror (Buisine 2001: 3923; Childs 1988: 277).
The later volumes of his memoirs are filled with distressing comments on

74

Morag Martin

old age and sickness, intermixed with exuberant schoolboy crushes on

much younger women that were not always reciprocated. Like Clairon,
Casanova felt young at heart, in contrast to his uncooperative body. At
age forty-five, he admitted still loving the fair sex, but with much less
fire and thus felt he no longer had as many claims on their affections
(Casanova 1900, vol. VIII: 37). Despite admitting to physical frailties,
his self-delusions led him to abhor women who reminded him of his age
or toyed with his waning passions (Casanova 1900, vol. VIII: 351). He
wanted to be seen as the unchanging libertine, always capable of wit and
vitality. His retirement to a solitary life as the librarian to the Count of
Lamberg was a means of ensuring the posterity of his public image. Even
in semi-exile and despite changing fashions, his sense of propriety never
left him. He was the laughing stock of the Counts retinue for continuing
to wear a white plume, his suit of gold embroidered silk, his vest of black
velvet . . . and presumably his wig, while he accused them of being
Jacobins (Ligne 1967: 293). Casanova stubbornly held on to his
prerogatives as libertine and fashionable gentleman, while nonetheless
cursing the changes brought by aging and the disintegration of the society
he had been a part of.

Conclusion
Both Casanova and Clairon were enthusiastic converts to new philosophical trends and thus to aesthetic shifts as well. Clairon elevated her
status as an educated, rational actress, friend of philosophes and creator
of authentic theater. Her rejection of traditional costumes and makeup
was revolutionary in the 1750s. Casanova prided himself in his literary
pastimes and philosophical bent, stressing his enlightened rationality
despite his aristocratic libertine behavior. His stress on simplicity, naturalness, and especially youth linked him to the taste of other enlightened men.
Yet, as an actress and a libertine they were also outside the roles admired
most by the literate elite. Their lifestyles clashed directly with the ethos
of natural and pure beauty. Despite calls for authenticity on stage and in
the bedroom, the process for getting there demanded artifice, and this
artifice was essential to their positions in society. Their memoirs stress the
continued malleability of the painted face and the inherent play between
artifice and nature.
Though both Casanova and Clairon continued to play with the language and practices of artifice, their challenge of the new aesthetics of
beauty provided neither with stable lives or economic support as they
neared old age. Ultimately, they could not conciliate their own sense of
vanity with the growing emphasis on youthful charms or fully comprehend
the changes occurring during the Revolution. The petulant, overbearing
tone of their memoirs reflect their bitter disappointment with both their
aging bodies and the new social world that rejected them, despite their

Casanova and Mlle Clairon

75

glorious pasts. Their conciliation of artifice and naturalness, however, was

not just a last attempt by aging performers to hang on to the past. It
signaled the complexity inherent in ideals of transparency. Undoubtedly,
many other painters of the face found the transition to natural beauty both
difficult and unwise. Evidence for the continued use of rouge and face
paint can be found in advertisements for cosmetics and the account books
of perfumers which list continued sales to both men and women throughout the Revolution (Martin 1999: 31, 80). Casanova and Clairons
redefinition of nature to include artifice was being practiced in a quieter
manner by many of their contemporaries.
A final sign of the flexibility inherent in the definition of natural beauty
can be found in the spread of its ideals to the popular directories of
Parisian prostitutes printed in the early nineteenth century. Most of these
women were described in the same terms with which Rousseau characterized his Julie: simple, unmannered, in a word pretty. One such fille
publique named Anglique was not a perfect beauty but was praised
for reuniting so many good physical and moral traits. Her unaffected
attractions, however, clashed with the description of her co-worker
Justine, who though rather pretty, needed the help of art to give
her skin a vermilion tint (Nouvelle liste 1801: 910, 39). The bordello
reflected the triumph of naturalized beauty, but it also contained the means
for its achievement: artifice. As in the lives of the libertine and the actress,
the symbolism of transparent beauty had entered the bordello only to be
coopted by cosmetics and corruption. Never truly scrubbed clean of its
marks and vices, the face remained a complex and ultimately treacherous
read at the end of the eighteenth century, no matter how simplified its
meaning was meant to be.

Notes
1. This article is an expanded version of a paper presented at the 2002
ASECS conference in Colorado Spring. I would like to thank Peggy
Waller, Jean Pedersen, and Rebecca Earle for their comments; Colin
Jones, Maxine Berg, and Timothy Tackett for their continued support;
and the staff of the Comdie Franaise archives for their assistance.
2. Marmontels article on Dclamation thatrale in the Encyclopedie
was a peon to Clairons naturalized style of rendering complex emotions
(Encyclopedie 1754, vol. IV: 6834).
3. Clairons authentic costumes looked very anachronistic to late-eighteenthcentury commentators (Agion 1926: 426).
4. Not mentioned in her memoirs, her last love was the Baron de Stel
at age sixty-nine. Even though she felt her exterior no longer offers
anything seductive, he paid her taxes and bequeathed her a pension
of 5000 francs a year (Aussanville 1910: 16).
5. For an excellent analysis of Mme de Pompadours use of makeup as a
symbol of power see Hyde 2000.

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Morag Martin

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