simcoe/ART

Nicholas Hilliard, "Portraits of Elizabeth I & Robert Dudley" (1575)

On Nov. 25th, Bonham’s auction house in London will be auctioning off a pair of miniatures painted by 16th C. English artist Nicholas Hilliard of Elizabeth I and her lover (?) Robert Dudley. It seems though that they were commissioned by Elizabeth not as a celebration of their romance, but rather to mark its ending. From the Telegraph:

That summer he (Dudley) threw an extravagant 19-day party for her at his home, Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, in what some historians have seen as a last-ditch attempt to win her hand. Lombardi, an expert in miniatures, said: “Whether these were something to do with that, or were a gift to him because she knew it was all over, we will never know.”

Both Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester were patrons of the artist, Nicholas Hilliard, described by Lombardi as “the father of miniatures”. They were painted using watercolours on vellum, the skin of an unborn animal, and would originally have formed part of a piece of jewellery.

Bonhams described them as “a remarkable survivor from the Tudor period .”To hold in the palm of your hand a pair of portraits that would have undoubtedly rested in the palm of the hand of the Queen of England five centuries ago is an extraordinary feeling.” They are being sold by Eleanor Hamilton, a collector of miniatures, who bought them in 1970.

Link to the full article here or link here to the press release from Bonham’s.

I have noticed over the last couple months that Leonarda da Vinci has been in the news more than he has been since Dan Brown had his way with him in a few years back. A  couple of quick links:

- Over at the “CultureGrrl” blog, there is post about Pascal Cotte,  a Frenchmen who has been taking detailed digital scans of the Mona Lisa and has created “a reproduction of the Mona Lisa with the light blues and brilliant whites he thinks represent the painting in its original form.”

- At the Smithsonian magazine website is an article concerning the findings of Renaissance scholar Gary M. Radke. He has announced that two silver figures on a plaque from the Florence Baptistery, which had been thought to have been creations by Andrea del Verrocchio were actually made by his student, Leonardo.

- But the big news all over the art world for the last month had been the discovery of the portrait to the right. Originally sold in the 1990s for relatively low price of $19,000 it has been re-evaluated by the famous Martin Kemp of Oxford. Using multiple processes, including fingerprint analysis, it has been reattributed to Leonardo. Check out the article here.