Instead it is somewhat larger, but at just 257 mm × w 173 mm still smaller than a sheet of A4 paper. of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, c1590īut there were other times when this intimate form and size was not suitable for the sentiments that the person commissioning the painting wanted to express, and that’s definitely the case with the portrait of Henry Percy that I’m writing about today. The painters were often also jewellers or goldsmiths and it was a very high status form of artwork with Hilliard, claiming it ‘excelleth all other painting whatsoever in sundry points’.Īnother cabinet portrait by Hilliard. They were often set in ornately decorated frames set with jewels or even hidden in a small box so only revealed to a chosen few. As Hilliard said in his Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning (c1600) these tiny objects needed to be seen “near unto the eye”.
Wizard who retired to a miniature garden story portable#
Such pictures had grown in popularity from the early 16thc as they were easily portable and could be used as diplomatic presents in negotiations about royal marriages or political affairs, and were also a more intimate, personal form of portraiture, which could be shared or given to family members, close friends or lovers. The new form of painting maintained the same underlying emphasis as illumination : private contemplation. The term miniature comes from Latin luminare, to illuminate, and it’s likely the modern use of the word derives from its use in painting rather than the other way around.
They almost all tend to be just head and shoulders portraits with little in the way of background, and were commissioned by the sitters for sharing privately with friends.Īs an art form the miniature developed from the illumination of manuscripts, the practice of which for obvious reasons had declined dramatically with the invention of printing. Apart from the many magnificent large propaganda portraits of Elizabeth herself the chances are that if you know any images from the period they’ll be small oval or circular miniatures by one of a small school of artists including Hilliard who recorded the leading figures of the day. The late 16thc was an age when English painting flowered in a new and unusual way. Self portrait of Nicholas Hilliard, 1577. If it’s doesn’t look again because I suspect it might be the most cryptic of all Elizabethan paintings. But the Earl was equally distinguished in his day and lived a very intriguing, and often dangerous, life.īefore you read on take a close look at the picture and see if anything strikes you as in any way unusual or odd.
He was the most famous artist of his day in England and well known for his championing of the miniatureasan art form, although this picture is a little larger. Of the two, Hilliard is, of course, the far better known. The painting showing Henry in an unusual garden setting is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam having been sold by the family in 1937.
The sitter is Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland and the artist Nicholas Hilliard.
This painting has intrigued me since I first saw it, and I’ve included it in lectures on both Elizabethan gardens and art history, for reasons that I hope will soon become apparent. Henry Percy, by Nicholas Hilliard c1595, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
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