C18th makeups: ancien régime France
Ancien régime, France
The ancien régime, the ‘old order’, is the term often used to label the aristocratic social and political system established in France under the Valois and Bourbon dynasties, where power relied on the three pillars of the monarchy, the clergy, and the aristocracy.
It was swept away by the revolution of 1789: although the monarchy was briefly re-established after 1815, France was never, nor looked, the same again.
The movies
Le libertin (2000): Madame Therbouche (Fanny Ardant), a flirtatious painter from Berlin, persuades intellectual Denis Diderot to pose naked for a painting. Jacques Clemente was the makeup supervisor; Jocelyne Lemery, Lydia Pujols & Jean-Christophe Roger were the key makeup artists.
La Nuit de Varennes (1982): This film imagines a group of travellers, including Thomas Paine, Casanova, Restif de La Bretonne, and countess Sophie de la Borde (Hanna Schygulla), one of Marie Antoinette’s ladies-in-waiting, meeting in the town of Varennes on 20 June 1791 as revolutionaries arrest the fleeing royal family. Manilo Rochetti was the makeup artist for the movie.