Interview with Dr. Erin Griffey: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Early Modern Queens, Beauty, and Cosmetics

The Royal Studies Podcast

Dr. Erin Griffey is a specialist in early modern visual and material culture at the University of Auckland and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. She has published widely on court culture, especially the early seventeenth-century British queen Henrietta Maria and the Stuart court. She has written On Display: Henrietta Maria and the Materials of Magnificence (Yale University Press, 2015) and her forthcoming work includes chapters on beauty in the forthcoming Bloomsbury Cultural History of Beauty. She won the Renaissance Studies Article Prize for her article 'The Rose and Lily Queen: Henrietta Maria's Fair Face and the Power of Beauty at the Stuart Court' (2022). She is writing a book titled Facing Decay: Beauty, Wrinkles and Anti-Aging in Early Modern Europe, (Penn State University Press, forthcoming) and she is also collaborating with colleagues in Chemistry on the Beautiful Chemistry Project in recreating a selection of early modern cosmetic recipes in the lab.
Erin’s work:

You can find out more about Erin and her team’s recreation of recipes at https://www.beautifulchemistryproject.com/

For her article on Henrietta Maria and beauty: Griffey, E. (2021). ‘“The Rose and Lily Queen”: Henrietta Maria’s fair face and the power of beauty at the Stuart court.’ Renaissance Studies, 35(5), 811-836.

For a general introduction to beauty at court, see Griffey, E. (2022). ‘Beauty.’ In Erin Griffey (ed.), Early Modern Court Culture. Routledge.

Keep an eye out for Erin’s forthcoming work on beauty:

Griffey, E. (forthcoming). ‘Beautiful Experiments: Reading and Reconstructing Early Modern Cosmetic Recipes.’ In Sara Bendall and Serena Dyer (eds.), Embodied Experiences of Making in Early Modern Europe: The Body, Gender and Material Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Griffey, E. (forthcoming). ‘Art and Beauty and ‘Ideas of Beauty’. In Sarah Toulalan (ed.), A Cultural History of Beauty. Bloomsbury.

Griffey, E. (forthcoming). Facing Decay: Beauty, Wrinkles, and Anti-Aging in Early Modern Europe. Penn State University Press.

Also check out:

Burke, Jill. (2023). How to be a Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity. Profile Books.
Forthcoming exhibitions on beauty:

In Love with Laura: A Mystery in Marble, Kunsthistoriches Museum:

https://www.tiqets.com/en/KHM-kunsthistorisches-museum-tickets-l141961/in-love-with-laura-a-mystery-in-marble-e46826/

The Cult of Beauty, The Wellcome Collection:

https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/ZJ1zCxAAACMAczPA