Why do people look the way they do in portraits of the past? From the alarmingly lead-whitened cheeks of the Renaissance, to the disappearing hairline of the seventeenth century, mouse-hair eyebrows of the eighteenth and rouged-cheeks of the Victorians, portraits have been governed by cosmetics, fashions and ever-changing concepts of beauty. Not only women, but men too were at the mercy of changing trends in hair styles, wigs, jewellery, smallpox patches and artificial teeth. From the application of rhubarb or boiled pigeon grease, mercury or lead, powders and poisons have dominated the ‘look of an age’. While the portraitist strove to capture the individual, this had to be translated through the mask of stylish convention, to balance personality with the ‘ideal of beauty.’