Personal reflection by Loes van Damme-Rietvelt
Fashionable camouflage — what might those black patches conceal?
When I first saw this painting by William Hogarth, A Rake’s Progress: The Tavern Scene, my eye was immediately drawn to the small black patches on the faces of some of the women.
At first glance, they look like fashionable beauty spots.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such black patches, known as mouches, were worn on the face as decoration. They could be made from silk, velvet or other dark materials and created a striking contrast with the pale complexion that was considered beautiful at the time.
But they could also serve another purpose: to conceal blemishes, scars or damage to the skin.
And that small detail suddenly took on a different meaning for me.
Hogarth did not paint a respectable drawing room. We are in a London tavern, surrounded by alcohol, prostitution and sexual excess — circumstances in which sexually transmitted infections played an important role.
One of these infections was syphilis.
Today, we know that syphilis is caused by the spiral-shaped bacterium Treponema pallidum. The infection is transmitted mainly through sexual contact, but it can also be passed from mother to child during pregnancy.
Syphilis can progress through several stages. During secondary syphilis, a wide variety of skin and mucosal lesions may occur. In later stages, serious neurological and other organ damage can develop.
In the eighteenth century, nobody knew that a bacterium was responsible. There was no reliable diagnostic testing and no effective antibiotic treatment. Therapies were often ineffective and could sometimes be harmful in their own right.
We cannot know whether the black mouches in Hogarth’s painting were actually intended to conceal syphilitic skin lesions.
But it is precisely that uncertainty that makes this detail so interesting to me.
A tiny black patch could represent fashion, seduction and perhaps also concealment.
Behind something intended to make a person appear more attractive, there may also be fear: fear of disease, fear of shame and, above all, fear of the judgement of others.
Today, we can diagnose Treponema pallidum infection and treat syphilis effectively with antibiotics.
But have we really changed that much?
Even now, people try to conceal aspects of their bodies that make them feel self-conscious or ashamed.
For me, those tiny black spots are therefore much more than an eighteenth-century fashion accessory.
They became a small doorway into a much larger story about microbiology, disease, beauty, shame and the way people look at one another.