Face‐Work

Bringing gender history, the history of the body and art history into a conversation with material culture studies, this article argues that the sudden fashionability of beards in Renaissance Europe has been intricately linked with a culture of material and visual experimentation. I propose shifting perspectives from a focus on the symbolism of beards towards examining how early modern ways of material engagement with the matter of hair crafted a visual attention to facial hair that made up the sociocultural significance of beards. Focusing on how people made hair matter, I suggest working with the concept of face‐work. In particular, this article maps how the Reformation upheavals and the rise of new visual practices dynamised Renaissance protagonists’ creative engagement with facial hair as a means for staging the self

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Conversation · Early Modern Europe · Face (sociological concept · Focus (optics · Literature · Social science · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · The Renaissance · Visual arts · Visual culture · Anthropology · Classics · Communication · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies

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• The Growth and Erasure of the Papal Beard

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• Luís Fróis, Gendered Knowledge, and the Jesuit Encounter with Sixteenth-Century Japan

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  Evelyn Welch, Dennis Romano•Renaissance and Reformation•2005

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• Beard Fetish in Early Modern England. Sex, Gender, and Registers of Value

  Mark Albert Johnston, Dirk Von Der Horst•Renaissance and Reformation•2012

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• On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy. Men, Their Professions, and Their Beards

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  Stefan Hanß•German History•2017

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• Renaissance Faciality

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• Visual Acuity and the Physiognomer's Art of Observation

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• Martin Luther's Body

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  Marcel Mau, Marcel Mauss•Les techniques du corps•2002

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  Open Access•Will Fisher•Renaissance Quarterly•2001

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• Hair, Emotions and Slavery in the Early Modern Habsburg Mediterranean

  Open Access•Stefan Hanß•History Workshop Journal•2019

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• Fluxes

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• The Accelerated Development of Youth

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