miniature

miniature. A term applied to two different kinds of pictures: first, representational images (as distinct from decorative motifs) in illuminated manuscripts; and secondly, very small independent paintings, particularly portraits that can be held in the hand or worn as a piece of jewellery. The word derives from the Latin minium, the red lead used to emphasize initial letters in manuscripts, decorated by the miniator. However, on account of a mistaken etymology, the term has become connected with ‘minute’ (small). In the Middle Ages a manuscript ‘miniature’ was called historia, and the portraits painted by Hilliard and others were named ‘limnings’ or ‘pictures in little’ by the Elizabethans. They were usually painted in watercolour on vellum (see parchment), or occasionally on ivory or card, and in the 17th and 18th centuries there was a vogue for miniatures done in an enamelling technique.

Portrait miniatures developed from a fusion of the traditions of medieval illumination and the Renaissance medal and they perhaps originated in France in the 1520s; in 1526—in the first known reference to such works—Marguerite d'Alençon, sister of Francis I of France, sent Henry VIII of England two lockets that opened up to reveal portraits. These do not survive, but at much the same time the Flemish-born Lukas Hornebolte (c.1490–1544) began producing miniatures at Henry's court, including one of Henry himself (Fitzwilliam Mus., Cambridge). Hornebolte was a fairly mediocre artist, but he began the renowned English tradition in miniature painting, and according to van Mander he gave lessons in the technique to Holbein, the first great exponent of the art. Holbein's work was in turn an inspiration to Hilliard, who begins the golden age of miniature painting in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The art continued to flourish in England (and to varying degrees in other countries) until the mid-19th century, when photography virtually killed it as a serious form of expression.