✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Visual Arts

Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver, National Portrait Gallery ★★★★★

21 Feb 19 – 19 May 19, 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM

Good things often come in small packages, and at National Portrait Gallery's exhibition Elizabethan Treasures, small reigns supreme

Queen Elizabeth I by Nicholas Hilliard, 1572 © National Portrait Gallery, London (detail)
Queen Elizabeth I by Nicholas Hilliard, 1572 © National Portrait Gallery, London (detail)
Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver, National Portrait Gallery 5 Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver, National Portrait Gallery Kristina Foster
Portraits in the English Renaissance were highly charged objects. They were often depicted as dangerously seductive. In John Webster’s revenge tragedy, The White Devil, a woman kisses a poisoned portrait of her husband and dies, a warning against Catholic-style image worship. But don’t let this puritanical threat put you off visiting a fascinating new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, which displays the finest examples of work by court painters Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, masters of one of the most popular art forms in England during the 16th and 17th centuries.


In bringing together a vast collection of Tudor and Stuart portrait miniatures, the gallery explores how these diminutive art pieces were both emblems of power and microscopic windows into individuality, both ostentatiously public and intensely private. The immersive thrill of the exhibition is immediately heightened as visitors are given magnifying glasses upon arrival, allowing us to appreciate the sheer detail on such a small scale. The effect is utterly beguiling. Hilliard and Oliver’s imitative precision captures the sartorial excess of the period; you can see the translucency of the Flemish lace, the iridescent quality of the jewels, the fine hairs of moustaches which curl over aloof expressions.


Almost every piece conforms to the tradition in early modern portraiture of evoking overworked surfaces and tactile sensuousness to reflect status. But amidst the richly-decked figures, one stands out. An amorous young courtier poses bare-chested with a sultry ‘come hither’ look against a background of flames – a symbol for burning passion.



(Detail) Unknown man against a background of flames by Nicholas Hilliard, c.1600. Purchased with the assistance of the Murray Bequest © Victoria & Albert Museum.


Of course, the portable nature of miniatures meant that they were popular as love tokens. By far the most interesting theme explored in the exhibition is that of clandestine love – and not necessarily between a man and a woman. In a more cryptic image, a man reaches up to grasp a disembodied hand that extends down from a cloud. Written in the background are the words ‘Athenian because of love’ – Athenian love being a euphemism for homoerotic relations. Shrouded in mystery, it is a piece that wonderfully shows off the period's attraction to symbolism, coded meanings and virtuosic wordplay.


As two painters at the centre of court life, Hilliard and Oliver’s tiny portraits depict some of the era’s biggest personalities: swashbuckling explorers; Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake; and, of course, the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, Elizabeth I, James I and Anne of Denmark. Additionally, a trump card of a recently discovered portrait of King Henry III of France will be on show for the first time. The miniatures' capaciousness as vessels of meaning is perhaps why the sitters seem so alive in their downsized likenesses, even 400 years later. Eternally damned in the throes of love, distilled at the height of their power, they are ever penetrating, ever preserved in these precious ovals.

by Kristina Foster

What Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver, National Portrait Gallery
Where National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London, WC2H 0HE | MAP
Nearest tube Leicester Square (underground)
When 21 Feb 19 – 19 May 19, 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Price £10
Website Click here to book now



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 27–29 January
Things to do in London this weekend: 27–29 January
Harrison Ford in Shrinking, AppleTV+ (Photo: Apple)
What to watch on TV this week
Culture After Dark: The Best Museum Late Night Openings
Culture After Dark: the best museum late-night openings

Editor's Picks

The defining moments of Christian Dior's life and work
The defining moments of Christian Dior's life and work
Gilbert & George in front of their work Handball @ BRAFA 2019 © Fabrice Debatty
Gilbert & George Interview: 'We're the darlings of the lower classes'
Andy Warhol, Tate Modern, Aubrey Beardsley, Tate Britain, Gauguin, National Portrait Gallery
The best art exhibitions in London this March
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).

We recommend nearby

  • Henrietta Hotel and Restaurant

    Michelin-starred chef Ollie Dabbous has teamed up with luxury hospitality specialists The Experimental Group to open a modern British bistro within a boutique Covent Garden hotel.

    Read more...
    Book Map
  • Frenchie Covent Garden

    Restaurant and wine bar Frenchie has been credited with redesigning the Parisian way of eating. Its simple, generous yet precise dishes are heavily influenced by chef cum owner Gregory Marchand's classical training in Nantes.

    Book Map
  • Din Tai Fung
    Book Map

Elizabethan

National Portrait Gallery

Art

You might like

  • Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams, V&A

    Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams, V&A review ★★★★★

  • Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890) Starry Night 1888. Paris, Musée d'Orsay Photo (C) RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski

    Van Gogh exhibition, Tate Britain review ★★★★★

  • Don McCullin exhibition, Tate Britain: Detail of Seaside Pier on the south coast, Eastbourne, 1970s

    Don McCullin photography exhibition, Tate Britain review ★★★★★

  • Detail: Tracey Emin, Sometimes There is No Reason, 2018

    Review: Tracey Emin: A Fortnight of Tears, White Cube Bermondsey ★★★★★

  • Olafur Eliasson, Your uncertain shadow (colour), 2010. Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection, Vienna Photo: María del Pilar García Ayensa/ Studio Olafur Eliasson Cour

    Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life, Tate Modern, review ★★★★★

  • Antony Gormley, LOST HORIZON I, 2008.  Cast iron. 189 x 53 x 29 cm (32 elements). Installation view, White Cube, Mason’s Yard, London, England Photograph by Stephen White, London © the artist.

    Antony Gormley, Royal Academy London



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×