Now On: The Bath and the Mirror

A joint exhibit on now at the National Medieval Museum (Musée de Cluny) and the National Renaissance Museum at the Chateau d'Ecouen explores daily rituals around bathing and grooming from the Greco-Roman era through the Renaissance. If you're interested in learning more about daily life in pre-modern Europe, I recommend this exhibit, an impeccably curated and fascinating glimpse into Roman Empire hairstyles and bathing rituals, formulas pre-modern Europeans used to make balms, unguents, rouges and other early beauty regimes, and artistic representations of beauty and grooming through the Renaissance period. It also debunks the myth that no one so much as approached a bath or wore makeup during the "dark ages", showing how social bathing and grooming rituals simply went underground in the medieval period, as the powerful Christian church regarded such rituals as potentially sinful. It's a heady mix of art and science, with helpful multimedia installations putting the artifacts in context. Altogether, 144 samples of powders, onguents and other excavated materials were analyzed by researchers to help reconstitute and describe certain formulas, while several delicate pigments and other substances remain intact from the era, displayed in the glass or ceramic containers they were found in.

Part of the exhibit at the Musée de Cluny is held at the newly reopened Gallo-Roman frigidarium, which once housed a public bath during the period when Paris was Lutetia, part of the Roman empire. An opportunity to explore a part of the site that was closed for restoration for several years.

More information: Visit the official website

Image: Aphrodite removing her sandal - Greco-Roman era/Musée du Louvre. © RMN - Hervé Lewandowski