Physical description
Drawing, in outline, depicting Elizabeth I, full length. The borders of the sheet have been chamferred.
Place of Origin
London, England (made)
Date
ca. 1585 (made)
Artist/maker
Hilliard, Nicholas, born 1542 - died 1619 (artist)
Materials and Techniques
Pen and ink drawing on vellum
Dimensions
Height: 14.2 cm, Width: 12 cm
Descriptive line
Design for the Great Seal depicting Elizabeth I, pen and ink drawing, by Nicholas Hilliard, ca. 1585.
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Strong, Roy. Artists of the Tudor Court: the Portrait Miniature Rediscovered 1520-1620. London: The Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983.
Cat. 190, p. 120. Full Citation:
“NICHOLAS HILLIARD
Elizabeth I, c. 1585
Victoria & Albert Museum (P.9-1943)
Pen and ink on vellum, rectangular, 13.7 x 11.6 cm., 5 13/32 x 4 9/16 in. (the borders have been chamfered).
There are only three surviving drawings certainly by Nicholas Hilliard, of which this is the earliest. The costume in this drawing, which was originally rectangular, is from a decade earlier and the silhouette and details of the dress can be closely paralleled in a series of dated images of Elizabeth I. The first is in the illuminated charter for Mildmay College, 1584 (no. 191), the second the “Ermine Portrait” at Hatfield, 1585 and the third the “Armada Portrait”, celebrating the defect of the Spanish Armada in 1588, at Woburn Abbey (Auerbach, Hilliard, pl. 77). The formal bows across the shoulders and down the front of the dress are indeed identical to those in the “Armada Portrait”. So spectacular are both dress and jewels that there can be no doubt that this drawing, until now regarded as being of a lady of the court, must be of Elizabeth I. The face, rendered in linear terms, is perfectly compatible with dated images from these years.
Pope-Hennessy cites this drawing as evidence for Hilliard’s likely use of an optical device similar to that which must have been used by Holbein for executing this type of precise drawing. All the technical evidence, however, excludes such a possibility: this is a drawing direct from life. He also locates the style as French which is not likely. Although Hilliard was familiar with the work of the Clouets, his drawing style stems from a direct imitation especially those by Dürer, both of which he specifically recommends as basic training in his Treatise and the treatment of the folds in the sleeves of the dress is directly Düreresque. Technical evidence would not support Pope-Hennessy’s assertion that “the painting of Hilliard’s miniature was almost certainly prefaced by careful graphic studies and that a series of pattern drawings parallel to the Holbein series at Windsor must once have existed. On the contrary, all Hilliard’s miniatures were conceived direct with not preliminary studies, making this drawing something quite exceptional. IT IS AT THIS PERIOD, C. 1585, that Hilliard began to paint large, full-length miniatures, so perhaps this was a drawing in preparation for an especially splendid miniature of the Queen. There is however, another more likely possibility. In 1584, Hilliard designed a second Great Seal, for which the Queen’s commission runs: “You shall embosse…patterns for a new Great Seal according to the last pattern made upon parchment by Our servant Hilliard.” The obverse of that seal is identical in silhouette to the drawing but clearly not the same. The commission, however, states that this was according to the last pattern” meaning that others had been prepared and rejected. It can therefore be suggested that this drawing may be connected with the preparation of patterns for submission to the Queen. The drawing is clearly, even the face, from life and the placing of the figure outdoors fulfils exactly the Queen’s famous choice of location to sit for her miniaturist: “in the open alley of a goodly garden, where no tree was near, nor any shadow at all” (Strong, Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, p. 8).
Two full-length miniatures of Elizabeth did once exist; one is recorded in the will of his son, Laurence: “Queen Elizabeth drawn from head to foot in small volume and in a jet box” and the second, referred to by De Piles, “a whole length of her sitting in her throne, which was deservedly esteem’d” (Auerbach, Hilliard, pp. 229-30).
COLLECTIONS: Francis Wellesley collection, sold Sotheby’s June-July 1920 (lot 428); A. G. B. Russell; presented by the N.A.C.F., 1943.
LITERATURE: V&A, 1947 (106)
John Woodward, Tudor and Stuart Drawings, London, 1949, No. 6.
Pope-Hennessy, Lecture, 1949, p. 26, pl. XXV.
Auerbach, Hilliard, pp. 184-6, 320 (188).”
Victoria and Albert Museum, Department of Engraving, Illustration and Design and Department of Paintings, Accessions 1943, London: HMSO, 1956.
The full text of the record is as follows:
'HILLIARD, Nicholas (1547-1619)
An Elizabethan lady in court costume.
An apparent signature is defaced by a tear and a collector's mark.
Pen and ink and pencil. On paper. Rectangular.
P.9-1943
Given by the National Art-Collections Fund
Note: This drawing was in the Francis Wellesley and A.G.B. Russell collections. It was No. 106 in the Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1947.'
Exhibition History
Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver (Victoria and Albert Museum 01/01/1947-31/12/1947)
Artists of the Tudor Court: the portrait miniature rediscovered, 1520-1620 (Victoria and Albert Museum 09/07/1983-06/11/19833)
Labels and date
British Galleries:
THE OFFICIAL IMAGE OF ELIZABETH I
Queen Elizabeth commissioned a new Great Seal in 1584. This drawing by Nicholas Hilliard may be one of the designs for her new seal. The silver seal itself was made at the royal mint. The Queen used to authorise important documents with a stamped wax impression like the one displayed here. [27/03/2003]
Materials
Ink; Vellum
Techniques
Drawing
Subjects depicted
Queen; Elizabeth I (Queen of England and Wales); Ruff
Categories
Portraits; Royalty; Drawings; Designs
Collection code
PDP
