Painted Gems. The Color Worlds of Portrait Miniature Painting in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Britain

Abstract

It has been argued persuasively that we should see the art of the portrait miniaturist as being closely related to the art of the goldsmith – with the painted ‘jewel’ of the portrait set into a richly ornamented piece of jewelry. Indeed, there is a close affinity between Nicholas Hilliard’s art of portrait miniature painting and goldsmithery. His Treatise’s famous section devoted to precious stones reflects this idea, as it is concerned with the relationship of those stones to the colors used in the miniatures, colors that can be seen as surrogates for the stones themselves. Color, light and shadow – these three aspects of how to render the natural world into paint are closely related: it is the complexity of the relationship that demanded a painting technique that took care not to create chia­roscuro-effects and specifically not let color be ‘corrupted’ by shadows or ‘mixed’ with other colors.

Richard Waller and the Fusion of Visual and Scientific Practice in the Early Royal Society

“…In contrast to public oil portraits, miniatures were intimate objects, often no larger than a watch face, and intended for close viewing. The most famous English miniaturist, Nicholas Hilliard, created portraits for nobles and monarchs, and he also wrote an unpublished manuscript promoting the art and its technique, known as A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning (c.1600) (Golding 2019, 1; Faraday 2019, 137;Coombs and Derbyshire 2015;Leonhard 2015). While miniatures were popular throughout English society, it was a genre seen as acceptable for and associated with women.…”

“…6 As a portraitist and miniaturist, More would have been well versed in the art of limning. This technique, particularly deployed for miniature portraits, involved a form of watercolor painting where pigment was mixed with gum in different proportions to create matte, saturate colors (Coombs and Derbyshire 2015, 242;Murdoch, Murrell, Noon, and Strong 1981, 3;Leonhard 2015). Seen as a particularly English art form, miniature painting and limning was championed in several treatises.…”