The English Miniature

The English Miniature, by John Murdoch, Jim Murrrell, Patrick J. Noon and Roy Strong (Yale, 1981) defines the miniature more in terms of materials and technique than size. Miniatures were painted on vellum and on ivory—in the nineteenth century a technique was developed for cutting ivory from a

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tusk like veneer and flattening it, so that a “miniature” could be painted on a surface as large as 30 x 100 inches. Ivory superseded vellum about 1700. The origins of miniature painting lie “within the world of the atelier of the illuminators attached to the Old Tudor Royal Library” (26) where first Henry VII and then Henry VIII brought artists of the Ghent-Bruges school, starting about 1492. Lucas Hornebolt, King’s Printer from 1531, taught Hans Holbein how to paint portrait miniatures. The authors profile Nicholas Hilliard, Isaac Oliver, Peter Oliver, John Hoskins and J.H. Jr., Samuel Cooper, Thomas Flatman, and others. There are many color illustrations, but limited to the Victoria and Albert’s collections, which probably makes for some distortions.

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