Which Roman poet wrote a poem about cosmetic recipes for women? Ovid wrote it.
The poem is titled Medicamina Faciei Femineae, commonly translated as Cosmetics for the Female Face or The Art of Beauty. Ovid presents advice on improving and preserving women's appearance, then gives five recipes for facial treatments using ingredients such as barley, vetch, egg, honey, spelt, and narcissus.
The work belongs to the tradition of didactic poetry, but Ovid gives his practical subject an elegant, playful treatment in elegiac couplets—the meter traditionally associated with Latin love poetry. Its light subject and instructional style also create a humorous contrast with Virgil's much more serious Georgics, an agricultural poem.
Only about 100 verses survive, probably from an original work of roughly 500 to 800 lines. The poem likely predates the third book of Ovid's Ars Amatoria, composed sometime before Ovid's exile in AD 8. It is sometimes confused with Ars Amatoria, but that is a broader work on love and seduction, not specifically a recipe poem about cosmetics.