We must confess that religious paintings are not our favourite subject, and we've tended to regard Spanish Catholic art as being, well, just a little too religious to cope with. So we approached the Francisco de Zurbarán exhibition at the National Gallery in London with a certain amount of trepidation. A degree of contrition is due.... Yes, there were monks, altarpieces and lots of saints, but we were blown away by Zurbarán's ability to depict textures and fabrics and to convey an intensity of feeling. It's an absolutely excellent exhibition, full of truly beautiful paintings. Such religious art was intended to bring the faithful closer to God, to bridge the gap between Heaven and Earth, in an age when many could not read. Zurbarán was a master at it. Let's start with a saint: Just take a look at the fabrics, trimmings and gems in this picture. And the garments are even more striking when you are stood in front of this nearly life-size figure. This is Casild...
Who were the first great English painters? The answer surely has to be Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver.
They may have worked on a small, even minuscule, scale, but in the late Tudor and early Stuart periods, Hilliard and Oliver were artistic giants. Their story is told in Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard & Oliver, an exquisite, rewarding and eye-opening exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery.
Portrait miniatures were big in England and in France in the late 16th century: popular with royals and the aristocracy, and with the emerging middle classes too. This wasn't so much art for public display as to express a personal relationship, perhaps indicating the recipient was in the monarch's favour, or worn to demonstrate loyalty. Or to show burning passion:
This Unknown Man Against a Background of Flames, painted by Hilliard in about 1600, presumably intended this picture as a keepsake for his beloved to express his undying devotion. Her image (let's assume it's a woman) is perhaps captured on another miniature held within the locket he's fingering, What an intimate picture, with his shirt open halfway down his chest. Hilliard highlighted the flames with powdered gold, so they would appear to flicker when the miniature was turned in the hand. Come on baby, light my fire....
The people portrayed on such miniatures tended not to be quite so dressed down, more dressed up to the nines. And that flaming gold background wasn't the norm either; those tiny portraits showed up well against a background wash of blue. Here is Nicholas Hilliard, painting himself in 1577, at the age of 30.
He's dressed in elegant and expensive black, with an absolutely splendid lacy white ruff. Borrow a magnifying glass at the entrance to this exhibition (or bring your own) and just marvel at the detail in that ruff, in a painting that's no bigger than a couple of inches across. And look even more closely at the details of his curly locks and the precision of the beard and moustache.
How did he do it? How could he paint in such detail on something so small? Hilliard wrote a guide to painting miniatures, or limning as it was known, in the shape of A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning. "Let your apparel be silk, such as sheddeth least dust or hairs," Hilliard advised. This wasn't a job for an artisan. "None should meddle with limning, but gentlemen alone."
The technique of limning was based on book illustration, using bodycolour and watercolour applied to fine vellum pasted to card, often a playing card. There's a film explaining how you'd prepare your surface, burnishing it with a dog's tooth on a stick. Once painted, gold and silver elements would be burnished with an implement using a stoat's tooth.... What we don't get an explanation of, though, is how they were able to see so clearly what they were painting on such a small scale. Some form of magnification surely must have been involved.
Hilliard must have been a good teacher. His pupil, Isaac Oliver, was probably an even better painter. As you go round this show, you can see how Hilliard sometimes didn't really seem to like to stray from the comfort zone of his admittedly marvellous portraits. Oliver, on the other hand, was more open to continental artistic influence and could deploy a more naturalistic style. Here's his own splendidly confident, elegant Self-Portrait from a decade or so after his mentor's.
Hilliard's early patron was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and a favourite of Elizabeth I. In the late 1570s he went to France, where among the portraits he painted was this one, of the future Lord Chancellor, Francis Bacon, who was there accompanying the English ambassador, Sir Amias Paulet.
Bacon's ruff is as nothing, though, compared with the lacework in this next painting by Hilliard: Unknown Woman with a Cherry. The cherry is a tiny spot of red, with an even tinier highlight on it, amid the incredible black-and-white detailing.
In 1584, a patent was drafted to give Hilliard a monopoly on miniatures of Queen Elizabeth. He was a valued royal image-maker -- a contemporary reported that he could paint Elizabeth from memory alone -- perhaps that's why in 1600 he was still depicting the Virgin Queen as she had looked at her coronation more than four decades earlier. Oliver wasn't up for such flattery. In about 1589, he gave us a naturalistic ageing monarch with a creased forehead. It was his only portrait of her.
Things changed after Elizabeth was succeeded on the English throne in 1603 by James VI of Scotland. Oliver developed into very much the favoured portraitist for the Stuarts, and on one wall there's an illuminating comparison of images of James's children by both Hilliard and Oliver. The latter's portrait of Princess Elizabeth, the later Queen of Bohemia, seems more real, more solid than the one made by his teacher.
Oliver's greatest portrait, though, may be the one he made of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, the heir to James's thrones. It's slightly larger than a standard miniature and captures the attractiveness of a prince whose death at the age of just 18 in 1617 caused an outbreak of national mourning. His younger brother Charles, the eventual successor to James, treasured this portrait.
More intimate are these two portraits of children by Oliver. We don't know their names, only their ages -- 5 and 4. One, smiling slightly, holds a carnation; the other, looking a bit more solemn, has in her hand a piece of fruit. They are absolutely charming.
But what will happen to these youngsters when they grow and are subject to all the cares of the adult world, perhaps like Hilliard's Young Man among Roses? The handsome, elegantly clad young man leans against a tree amid a thorny rosebush, his hand on his heart. He has been loyal but now he has fallen from favour. Is this Hilliard's masterpiece? It's an instantly recognisable image of Elizabethan England.
But if Hilliard could do Melancholy, Oliver could too. With a more elaborate composition, background and perspective. Oliver's Young Man Seated under a Tree looks even more disconsolate than Hilliard's. He's discarded one of his gloves. Could the woman in the couple walking in the middle ground be the sweetheart who's deserted him?
There's so much to take in in this exhibition, and it's one you'll need to give yourself plenty of time for. Although it's very well laid out, it's almost impossible for more than one person to view any particular miniature at any one time. When you watch the video at the end giving close-ups of some of the star exhibits, you'll realise how much you've missed, even with your magnifying glass. Already at this early stage of the year, this is looking like one of the best shows of 2019.
Nicholas Hilliard, Self-Portrait, 1577. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. © Victoria and Albert Museum
Nicholas Hilliard, Unknown Woman with a Cherry, c. 1595. The Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge. © Fitzwilliam Museum
Isaac Oliver, Unknown Girl Aged 5, 1590, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. © Victoria and Albert Museum
Isaac Oliver, Unknown Girl Aged 4, 1590, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. © Victoria and Albert Museum
Nicholas Hilliard, Young Man among Roses, c. 1587, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. © Victoria and Albert Museum
Isaac Oliver, Young Man Seated under a Tree, 1590-95. Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth II 2019
They may have worked on a small, even minuscule, scale, but in the late Tudor and early Stuart periods, Hilliard and Oliver were artistic giants. Their story is told in Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard & Oliver, an exquisite, rewarding and eye-opening exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery.
Portrait miniatures were big in England and in France in the late 16th century: popular with royals and the aristocracy, and with the emerging middle classes too. This wasn't so much art for public display as to express a personal relationship, perhaps indicating the recipient was in the monarch's favour, or worn to demonstrate loyalty. Or to show burning passion:
The people portrayed on such miniatures tended not to be quite so dressed down, more dressed up to the nines. And that flaming gold background wasn't the norm either; those tiny portraits showed up well against a background wash of blue. Here is Nicholas Hilliard, painting himself in 1577, at the age of 30.
How did he do it? How could he paint in such detail on something so small? Hilliard wrote a guide to painting miniatures, or limning as it was known, in the shape of A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning. "Let your apparel be silk, such as sheddeth least dust or hairs," Hilliard advised. This wasn't a job for an artisan. "None should meddle with limning, but gentlemen alone."
The technique of limning was based on book illustration, using bodycolour and watercolour applied to fine vellum pasted to card, often a playing card. There's a film explaining how you'd prepare your surface, burnishing it with a dog's tooth on a stick. Once painted, gold and silver elements would be burnished with an implement using a stoat's tooth.... What we don't get an explanation of, though, is how they were able to see so clearly what they were painting on such a small scale. Some form of magnification surely must have been involved.
Hilliard must have been a good teacher. His pupil, Isaac Oliver, was probably an even better painter. As you go round this show, you can see how Hilliard sometimes didn't really seem to like to stray from the comfort zone of his admittedly marvellous portraits. Oliver, on the other hand, was more open to continental artistic influence and could deploy a more naturalistic style. Here's his own splendidly confident, elegant Self-Portrait from a decade or so after his mentor's.
Things changed after Elizabeth was succeeded on the English throne in 1603 by James VI of Scotland. Oliver developed into very much the favoured portraitist for the Stuarts, and on one wall there's an illuminating comparison of images of James's children by both Hilliard and Oliver. The latter's portrait of Princess Elizabeth, the later Queen of Bohemia, seems more real, more solid than the one made by his teacher.
Oliver's greatest portrait, though, may be the one he made of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, the heir to James's thrones. It's slightly larger than a standard miniature and captures the attractiveness of a prince whose death at the age of just 18 in 1617 caused an outbreak of national mourning. His younger brother Charles, the eventual successor to James, treasured this portrait.
More intimate are these two portraits of children by Oliver. We don't know their names, only their ages -- 5 and 4. One, smiling slightly, holds a carnation; the other, looking a bit more solemn, has in her hand a piece of fruit. They are absolutely charming.
Practicalities
Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard & Oliver is on at the National Portrait Gallery in London until May 19. It's open daily from 1000 to 1800, with lates on Fridays until 2100. Full-price tickets are £10 and can be bought online here. The NPG is on St Martin's Place, just off Trafalgar Square and right next to the National Gallery. National rail and London Underground services at Charing Cross and Leicester Square stations are just a couple of minutes' walk away.More miniatures
There's a chance to see more pictures by Hilliard and Oliver from collections that aren't normally open to the public at Philip Mould in Pall Mall from March 12 to April 18 in an exhibition entitled Jewel in the Hand. Philip Mould is literally just a few minutes' walk from the Portrait Gallery.
Images
Nicholas Hilliard, Unknown Man Against a Background of Flames, c. 1600, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. © Victoria & Albert MuseumNicholas Hilliard, Self-Portrait, 1577. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. © Victoria and Albert Museum
Isaac Oliver, Self-Portrait, c. 1590, National Portrait Gallery, London. © National Portrait Gallery
Nicholas Hilliard, Francis Bacon, Later Baron Verulam and Viscount St Alban, 1578, National Portrait Gallery, London. © National Portrait GalleryNicholas Hilliard, Unknown Woman with a Cherry, c. 1595. The Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge. © Fitzwilliam Museum
Isaac Oliver, Unknown Girl Aged 5, 1590, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. © Victoria and Albert Museum
Isaac Oliver, Unknown Girl Aged 4, 1590, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. © Victoria and Albert Museum
Nicholas Hilliard, Young Man among Roses, c. 1587, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. © Victoria and Albert Museum
Isaac Oliver, Young Man Seated under a Tree, 1590-95. Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth II 2019
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