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Exchanging Royal Portraits Between France and England in the 1570s: The Politics of Scale

L’échange de portraits royaux entre la France et l’Angleterre dans les années 1570 : Politique de la mise à l’échelle
Anne-Valérie Dulac

Résumés

Cet article propose une relecture de la conversation entre Nicholas Hilliard et Sir Philip Sidney consacrée aux questions d’échelle et de proportion telle qu’elle est rapportée dans The Arte of Limning. Je montre que bien que cet échange ait jusqu’à présent surtout été lu comme la marque de l’intérêt de Sidney pour les théories artistiques humanistes développées sur le continent, il pourrait aussi faire écho à de précédentes négociations politiques et diplomatiques entre la France et l’Angleterre dans lesquelles les deux hommes furent impliqués. L’examen de la correspondance diplomatique et de divers portraits peints par les Clouet et Nicholas Hilliard nous permet de prendre la mesure de l’importance cruciale de l’expression de l’âge et de la taille dans le portrait politique sous toutes ses formes et dans tous ses formats, une tâche d’autant plus centrale et difficile, peut-être, pour les artistes spécialisées dans la peinture à échelle réduite. J’envisage ensuite la description que Hilliard fait de ses propres techniques afin de mieux comprendre comment il intégrait et transcrivait ces questions d’échelle dans son œuvre. Cela m’amène finalement à analyser l’importance du temps dans l’ensemble des mesures – aussi empiriques soient-elles – appliquées par le miniaturiste et à réaffirmer la nature éminemment politique du discernement entre statures lorsqu’elles sont représentées en petit volume.

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1The present article offers a discussion of the potentially political dimension of scale in some 1570s royal portraits produced in England and France, including portrait miniatures. In doing so, I will be following in the footsteps of Dympna Callaghan who, in a 2013 piece, explored the “size, dimension and scale” of portrait miniatures, in order to show how their “littleness” was absolutely central in both their creation and reception. Yet while Callaghan was mostly concerned with the religious import of small pictures “to be weewed of nesesity in hand neare unto the eye” (Hilliard 66), I will be looking into the politics of miniaturisation instead, focusing more specifically on the artistic and diplomatic conversation between France and England in the last quarter of the 16th century. The reason why the importance of scale in understanding early modern miniatures is not as self-evident as it might sound lies in the very word “miniature”. Elizabethan and Jacobean portrait miniaturists would have identified themselves as “limners” rather than miniaturists, and would have perhaps more readily associated “miniature”—should they have used it—with its etymological-cum-technical origin, yet unrelated to size altogether. “Miniature” in fact derives from the word “minium”, meaning red lead, thereby referring to the lexical and technical legacy tying “limnings” to the medieval art of illumination. Yet I argue that “proper proportion” (Callaghan 462), which relied upon the limners’ comprehension of scale, did play a major part in the composition and reception of small pictures at some critical political moments of the period under scrutiny.

“[L’aultre peinture qu’il a aussi faicte, servira seullement pour la taille”: Proportionable Suitors for a Queen

2I would first like to go back to one of the most famous descriptions of François Clouet’s Elizabeth of Austria in the opening pages of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Wild Thought (1962):

Let us now look at this portrait of a woman by Clouet, and ponder the reasons for the very deep aesthetic emotion aroused, it seems inexplicably, by the reproduction, thread by thread and with a scrupulous trompe-l’oeil effect, of a lace ruff. The example of Clouet is not chosen at random, for we know that he liked to paint smaller than life-size […]. What virtue is there, then, in reduction, whether of scale or of properties? (Lévi-Strauss 89-92)

Figure 1. François Clouet, Élisabeth d’Autriche (1554-1592), reine de France, femme de Charles IX, 1571.Oil on oak panel, 360 x 260 mm.

Figure 1. François Clouet, Élisabeth d’Autriche (1554-1592), reine de France, femme de Charles IX, 1571.Oil on oak panel, 360 x 260 mm.

© Musée du Louvre, Département des Peintures, INV 3254; B 2371

3Although touching on rescaling and miniaturisation, Lévi-Strauss’s famous discussion of the lace ruff in François Clouet’s portrait of Elizabeth of Austria (fig. 1) fails to mention the fact that the Louvre picture was made after a slightly smaller drawing (fig. 2). The painted portrait on panel may thus be regarded as a magnified version of the earlier drawing on paper, thereby complicating further the “virtue […] in reduction, whether of scale or of properties”. The caption for the drawing on the website of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France offers a rather partial comparison of the “masterpiece” (the drawing) and the later, “heavier” painting:

Drawing as he did the delicate face, throbbing with life behind the translucent carnation, Clouet created a masterpiece. This is the drawing after which he painted the Louvre portrait, whose expression slightly differs. The face is more oval, the eyes less stretched and the outline of the forehead on the right-hand side seems higher and fuller. The overall impression of poise and presence in the drawn portrait is undermined by the addition of the folded arms and hands, which makes the whole picture look heavier. (Portraits de cour n° 11, my translation)

  • 1 I am here using the phenomenological terminology which Étienne Jollet suggests may help us better (...)

4The author of the caption makes it clear how re-scaling—along with re-framing in the present instance—was not just a matter of adapting sizes: any new scale implied changes which, as trivial as they may sound (the outline of a forehead, the shape of an eye) did rather significantly weigh on the “intention” behind and impression made by the picture, perhaps even more obviously so when looking at early modern individual smaller portraits.1

Figure 2. François Clouet, Élisabeth d’Autriche, c. 1571. Black and red chalk on paper, 342 x 231 mm.

Figure 2. François Clouet, Élisabeth d’Autriche, c. 1571. Black and red chalk on paper, 342 x 231 mm.

© Paris, BNF, Estampes, Rés. Na 22

  • 2 These are quotes taken from the catalogue note for Piero del Pollaiuolo’s Portrait of a Youth (oil (...)

5The choice of an outward-looking pose which characterized an increasing number of such frontal presentations, “transforms the image into an encounter” and “results in a likeness charged with striking intimacy”.2 By adding the folded arms and hands, François Clouet did make the picture “heavier” indeed, as the figure of Elizabeth seems more distant and the viewer’s encounter with her proportionably less intimate. Re-framing left aside, the differing expression, forehead and eyes, if testifying to a possibly different intention and function, also speak of a rather liberal and empirical approach to re-scaling. When viewed in transmitted light, some portrait drawings by Jean and François Clouet seem to have sometimes relied upon the horizontal chain lines of the paper they used to position key points of the face so that it was divided into “proportional zones” (Button 163, see also Jollet 62-67), yet the method they used to render accurate proportions was never a systematic one and varies rather drastically from one portrait to the next. We do not know for certain how they went about transferring the proportions from the preparatory drawing to the later painting, yet most works seem to attest to an experimental or empirical process rather than a strictly geometrical or mathematical one.

6However liberal and flexible in their handling of proportions, the Clouets’ likenesses were striking enough for Catherine de’ Medici to employ Jean to paint a full-length picture of the future Henri III that she intended for Elizabeth I, with a view to arranging their marriage. Rather than the final painting, Catherine hastily dispatched two preparatory drawings which she describes as follows in a letter to La Mothe Fénelon (the French ambassador to England) dated July 3, 1571:

Monsieur de la Mothe Fénelon, pour ce que la peinture de mon fils n’estoit pas du tout parachevée, quand vostre homme partit dernièrement, je ne vous l’ay plus tost peu envoyer qu’à ceste heure par Vassal, présent porteur; encores n’a ce peu estre en une seulle peinture de la main de Me Janet, comme je l’essue désiré. Il n’eust le loisir que de faire, comme vous verrez, le visage qui est fort bien et parfaitement faict, après le vray naturel; et l’aultre peinture qu’il a aussi faicte, servira seullement pour la taille, qui est aussi la vraye semblance de mondict fils: mais il ne s'est pas, en ceste peinture, amusé à faire parfaictement le visage […]. Je suis d’advis que vous baillez lesdictes deux peintures au sr comte de Lestre […] en attendant que ledict Me Janet ait paraschevé la peinture qu’il faict en plus grand volume […].

[Monsieur de la Mothe Fénelon, because the painting of my son was not at all finished when your man left recently, I could not send it to you any sooner than at this time by Vassal, the present bearer; still, it could not be in a single painting by the hand of Me. Janet, as I had hoped. He only had the time to do, as you will see, the face, which is very well and perfectly done after the life; and the other painting that he also did, will only serve for the height, which is also the true likeness of my son: but he did not, in this painting, take the time to do the face perfectly. I am of the opinion that you give the said two paintings to the Earl of Leicester while waiting for the said Me. Janet to have completed the painting that he is doing in greater volume.] (Lettres de Catherine de Médicis 52, my translation).

  • 3 “Madame, en discourant avec la Royne d’Angleterre des choses que je mande en la lettre du Roy, nou (...)

7As Elizabeth Goldring notes, “owing to time constraints, it had not been possible for Clouet to execute [the depiction of the head in the first picture] from the life” (Goldring 103). The picture has not survived, but it is generally admitted that the portrait she sent must have been drawn after another one in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (fig. 3). We know from a later letter from La Mothe Fénelon to Catherine that the English Queen was anything but impressed by Clouet’s drawing.3

Figure 3. François Clouet, c. 1571. Le futur Henri III (wrongly identified with the Duke of Alençon). Black and red chalk, 333 x 228 mm.

Figure 3. François Clouet, c. 1571. Le futur Henri III (wrongly identified with the Duke of Alençon). Black and red chalk, 333 x 228 mm.

© Paris, BNF, Estampes, Rés. Na 22

8Interestingly enough, the second picture, in which the face is only very imperfectly rendered, according to Catherine, is meant to convey the height of her son only (“will only serve for the height”). In addition to the rather disapproving remark she was reported to have made about the use of charcoal in the drawing, Elizabeth apparently also complained about the age and height of her princely suitor (“à cause de l’âge et de la taille,” La Mothe Fénelon 225). The importance of height in Elizabeth’s appreciation of potential suitors is further confirmed by La Mothe Fénelon again, who, in a letter to Catherine dated February 10, 1572, wrote that “Milord de Bocaust” (Lord Buckhurst) had deterred him from pressing Elizabeth to contemplate marrying Alençon (Catherine’s second son) for reasons related to the latter’s age and height, again:

[L]e dict Boucaust, de sa part, me vouloit dire, ainsy qu’il m’avoit toutjour franchement parlé, qu’il le désiroit beaucoup plus qu’il ne voyoit aucun moyen de le pouvoir espérer, et m’a allégué des difficultés, de l’aage et de la taille, si grandes qu’avec l’infiny regret, qu’il m’a juré qu’il y avoit de son costé, il m’a quasy tout descouragé de n’en ozer plus parler du mien.

[The said Buckhurst, as to him, wanted to tell me in all honesty, as he had always spoken to me so, that he desired it far more than he could hope for it, alleging issues regarding age and height so great that to his utmost regret, which he swore was his, he nearly deterred me altogether from even daring speak about mine]. (La Mothe Fénelon 370, my translation)

9Elizabeth thus thwarted all hopes for a royal wedding on account of a lack of “proportion of age and height between them” (“la proportion des ans et de la taille estoit par trop inégale entre eux,” La Mothe Fénelon 370). The reason why Catherine hurried to send her son’s two pictures—however incomplete—to the English Queen, may therefore have been related to both Elizabeth’s “famous pronouncement that she could never marry anyone whose face she had not seen” (Goldring 103) and the equally important issue of her suitor’s height in such negotiations. As these examples suggest, the artists who were chosen to portray kings and queens must have been particularly careful with the rendition of proportions and sizes, all such matters inherently related to issues of scale. François Clouet must have been even warier of these questions when working on the preparatory drawing for the full-length portrait of the future Henri III which Catherine sent to Elizabeth (figure 4).

Figure 4. François Clouet, Le Duc d’Anjou, later Henri III, 1571. Crayon on paper, 32,2 x 22,4 cm. (This must be either the very drawing mentioned in Catherine’s letter or a copy thereof.)

Figure 4. François Clouet, Le Duc d’Anjou, later Henri III, 1571. Crayon on paper, 32,2 x 22,4 cm. (This must be either the very drawing mentioned in Catherine’s letter or a copy thereof.)

© Département des Estampes et de la Photographie, Réserve NA-22 (12)-Boîte. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

10Only one year before, in 1570, François Clouet had in fact been chosen by the members of the “bureau” of the “Cour des Monnoyes” to design Charles IX’s effigy for the stamping of new coins. On January 1, 1570, specimen coins were dispatched to the court in Angers, for the inspection of the King, who was quite dissatisfied with Clouet’s work: “La dicte effigie ne représente aucunement nostre aaige, ne pareillement nostre visage, ne la taille dont nous sommes à présent” (“the said effigy does not in any way represent our age, or equally our face or how tall we now are,” my translation, French letter qtd. in Dike 345). According to Jollet, this emphasis on the rendition of height on the “teston” (coin) raises three interrelated problems: that of the proportions of the body itself, that of the relation between the dimensions of the king’s own body and the size of the picture and, finally that of the king’s real height and the height of the king inside the picture (whether seen in full length or not, Jollet 50). Now of course Charles IX’s complaint about his effigy was not related to any mistake which Clouet may have made, but rather to the fact that Clouet had painted him the way he looked at a younger age, while the King was clearly adamant to offer a more mature and manly likeness.

11The correct rendition of height thus seems to have been such a crucial feature in the making of royal pictures and their reception, including small-scale likenesses, that all aforementioned instances set forth the technical difficulty faced by painters when working on pictures in small volume.

Seeing “weel and apparently […] which was the taule man” (Hilliard 62): Telling the Little from the Great

  • 4 Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1532/3-1588) was the queen’s favourite until the 1560s when he b (...)

12It is perhaps no coincidence that “the catalyst for [Catherine’s] hurried dispatch” of Clouet’s unfinished pieces was “Leicester’s gift to Catherine of a painting of himself ‘en petit volume’ [which] was clearly, in view of its diminutive size, a miniature—and surely by Hilliard” (Goldring 103).4 Miniature painters were expected to give as exact an impression of stature and height as painters working on larger-scale pictures.

13This point was anything but anecdotal at all, as transpires through the conversation which Nicholas Hilliard writes about in his Arte of Limning:

  • 5 Among recent analyses of “the single most important conversation between a poet and a painter in t (...)

[Y]et one wourd more in remembrance of an excelent man namly Sr Philip Sidny, that noble and most valiant knight that great scoller, and excelent Poet, great lover of all vertu and cuninge, he once Demanded of me the question, whether it weare possibl in one scantling, as in the lenght of six inches of a littel or short man, and also of a mighty bige and taulle man in the same scantling, and that one might weel and apparently see which was the taule man, and which the little, the picture being Just one lenght, I showed him that it was easely decerned if it weare cunningly drawne with true observations, for ower eye is cunninge, and is learned without rulle by long usse, as littel lads speake their vulgar tonge without gramour Rulls, but I gave him rules and suficient reasons to noet and observe, as that the littel man comonly hath also comonly short legs, and thieghs in comporison to his bulke of body or head, but though the head be as great as the tall mans, yet shall his forme and face and countenace be far otherwise, easey enough to diserne, the talle man has comonly low showlders, long shankes, thiegs, armes, hands and feet wherwith ouer eye is so comonly aquainted that without rule to us known, it knoweth it straight […]. (Hilliard 62) 5

  • 6 About the many portraits that were made of Sir Philip Sidney and the clues to his knowledge of stu (...)
  • 7 See also Duncan-Jones’s observation regarding Sidney’s height (“he may well have grown several inc (...)

14Sidney’s interest in knowing how to create an “apparent” impression of height (“apparently,” in Hilliard’s text, means “evidently” or “manifestly”) has usually been read as “evidence of the continentally oriented Sidney inquiring about how the technical practices of limning adhere to humanist principles of proportionality […] inherited from Vitruvian notions” (Desai 11). And indeed, although the recounted conversation is not dated, it may well attest to Sidney’s first-hand­—rather than just bookish—acquaintance with continental practices.6 As he wrote in a letter to Languet from Venice on February 26, 1574: “Hodiè effigiem meam inchoavit Paulus quidam Veronensis, propter quam oportet ut duos aut tres dies adhuc hic commorer” (“Today one Paul of Verona has begun my portrait, which is why I should stay here two or three more days” Kuin vol. 1, 130-132). Glossing the reference to Veronese, Roger Kuin points out that “it is unusual to have such detailed information on the making of a 16th-century portrait. Note the brief time estimated for the sitter’s presence: he would have been needed only for the head and perhaps the hands” (Kuin vol. 1, 132 n. 9). This would therefore not have been the first time Sidney had the opportunity to observe and speak to a painter, yet he would most probably not have stayed while the artist painted his body and rendered an impression of size (we know from contemporary accounts—and portraits—that Sidney was a rather tall man).7

  • 8 There remain many disagreements over the contents of and context for the letter: “As matters stand (...)

15In addition to displaying how conversant Sidney was with continental discussions of proportion and scale, his question may also have stemmed from both political and personal interrogations. Sidney was heavily involved in Elizabeth’s marital negotiations and quite public about his own opinion thereof. He even wrote a Letter to Queen Elizabeth touching her Marriage with Monsieur, urging her not to marry Anjou around 1579.8 Following as closely as he did all attempts at arranging a match between England and France, it is highly probable that he may have been aware of Elizabeth’s rebuff and harsh judgment upon Catherine’s two sons' youthful appearance and lack of stature. Biographical and historical evidence have led art historians to situate Sidney’s conversation with Hilliard sometime between October 1578, when Hilliard returned from France, and November 1585, when Sidney left for the Low Countries. Happening as it may have following Hilliard’s time in France, the two men’s exchange was thus posterior to Hilliard’s own close proximity to Henri III and “Monsieur”: François, Duke of Anjou, his younger brother. It is even most likely that Hilliard travelled to France in 1576 with a “specific order to provide [Elizabeth] with likenesses of Anjou” (qtd. in Goldring 137), perhaps precisely because she may have been rather sceptical of the previous larger-scale pictures she had received, including the life-size portrait attributed to the circle of François Clouet (figure 5).

Figure 5. French, 16th century, Prince Hercule-François, Duc d’Alençon, 1572. Oil on canvas. 188.6 x 102.2 cm.

Figure 5. French, 16th century, Prince Hercule-François, Duc d’Alençon, 1572. Oil on canvas. 188.6 x 102.2 cm.

© Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C.

16Three years only before this life-size likeness was executed, a severe bout of smallpox had left Anjou permanently scarred, his face most badly disfigured. But Elizabeth’s repeated remarks about her suitors’ height may indicate that Anjou’s face was not the queen’s only issue. And portraits on a smaller scale—like the ones for which Hilliard had already acquired a solid reputation when he was sent to France—were as capable of conveying size and stature as larger ones, provided their author was “cunning” enough to “deseave both the understanding and the eye” (Hilliard 50).

Space Occupation on the Smaller Scale

17The importance of stature and height in most political portraits may also account for Hilliard’s adoption of the oval format while in France. As Aslet et al. suggest in their article on the recent attribution of a magnificent miniature of Henri III (fig. 6) to Nicholas Hilliard, “[the oval format] was a useful tool for the ambitious Hilliard to adopt, since the oval support allowed him both to show more of the sitter’s clothing and to suggest the manner in which he or she occupied space.” (106)

Figure 6. Nicholas Hilliard, Henri III of France, 1576-1578. Watercolour and bodycolour on vellum laid on a playing card with five diamonds visible, 50 x 37 mm.

Figure 6. Nicholas Hilliard, Henri III of France, 1576-1578. Watercolour and bodycolour on vellum laid on a playing card with five diamonds visible, 50 x 37 mm.

© Djanogly Collection.

18In other words, the changing format of the miniature portrait allowed the limner to add in more “space,” hence more visual clues regarding the sitter’s occupation thereof, based upon the cunning re-scaling of the sitter as well as the inclusion of such further telling proportions as shoulder breadth. Hilliard did not start experimenting with formats until much later (the three small full-length miniatures which survive all date to the mid- to late 1580s). The “rather cramped nature of their composition indicates difficulties” and probably led Hilliard to create larger full-length cabinet miniatures (MacLeod et al. 79). They are still interesting for the present discussion, to try and grasp Hilliard’s understanding of scale and rendition of height. The case of Sir Christopher Hatton’s miniature (fig. 7) is most telling in this regard, as we learn from Camden that he was of “a comely talness of Body and amiable Countenance” and “got into […] Favour with the Queen” (Camden 458). Although the pictorial space is cramped indeed and the perspective rather disconcerting, Hilliard creates space enough to bestow a sense of scale on the viewer: “In spite of the small size, the spatial view is effectively brought out by the long coat hanging to the ground and creating depth for the standing figure, and the little dog at the bottom helps to suggest space” (Auerbach 116).

Figure 7. Nicholas Hilliard, Sir Christopher Hatton, 1588-1591. Watercolour and bodycolour and gold on vellum, laid on a playing card, 56 x 44 mm.

Figure 7. Nicholas Hilliard, Sir Christopher Hatton, 1588-1591. Watercolour and bodycolour and gold on vellum, laid on a playing card, 56 x 44 mm.

© Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

  • 9 The need to accentuate size differences the better to render scale in such a tiny format appears e (...)

19Even more specifically, the dog seems to suggest scale: although its features and characteristics indicate it belongs to a smaller species of dogs—not unlike the one occupying the foreground in one of Topsell’s illustrations (figure 8)—it still seems unrealistically tiny.9 Paradoxically enough, it also contributes to eliciting a sense of Hatton’s own tallness and stature, thereby taking part in the accurate rendition of his physical appearance, in spite of the formatting constraints.

Figure 8. Illustration in Edward Topsell’s History of Four-Footed Beasts, woodcut.

Figure 8. Illustration in Edward Topsell’s History of Four-Footed Beasts, woodcut.

© Topsell 138.

20The portrait of Hatton is even more telling as the courtier’s facial features serve to illustrate another description of how limners should work with proportions according to Hilliard:

Therfore I wilbe bould to remember me of one namly Sr. C. H. [Christopher Hatton] some times lorde Chancellor of England a man generally knowne and respected of all men amongst the best favours, and to be one of goodlyest parsonages of england, yet had he a very low forhead, not answerable to that good proportion on a third part of his face […]. (Hilliard 60)

21Breaking away from the rules of Albrecht Dürer, who contended that “comonly all faces howld one measure and true proportion” (Hilliard 60), Hilliard here suggests that “proportionality in art is not apprehended through a rationalizing intellectual filter” (Desai 18). The reason why this idea matters in terms of scale is because Hilliard uses the line of the forehead as the origin of all measures and scales in his portraits:

[Y]or marke shalbe yr first line wch yo drawe, but that must be most truly drawne, for that lyne must be a scalle to all the rest / and let that yor first lyne be the forehead stroake, as for exampel Soe then yo shall proceed by that scalle or scantlinge to doe all proportionablye to that bignes […]. (Hilliard 60)

22The forehead thus supposedly works as a basis for the picture’s “scale” or “scantling”. Yet his human sitters prevent Hilliard from operating with a “scantling” as rigid or systematic as Dürer’s suggested rules, which Hilliard deems fitter for carving or architecture:

[N]owe the reason why the rules of Alberte, serve more the carver than the Painter is becausse he discribeth and devideth the ppeortion of or of parts of men, like as of pillors or such other things, by measures of inches in lenght [sic], breadth, thiknes, and circumference, which measures serve not, nor can howld in painting, […] Because painting perspective and forshortning of lines, with due shadoing acording to the rule of the eye […]. (Hilliard 50)

  • 10 About the technical construction of eyes in some of Hilliard’s miniatures see Faraday (par. 9) and (...)

23Because they are not “pillors,” human subjects call for different rules­—including for scale—which may better fit the rendition of life and serve the encounter between the sitter and the viewer. “The rule of the eye” which Hilliard mentions refers to the cunning eye of the limner in pinpointing the needed spatial measurements or impressions­—however minimal—to create space. We may add that the eyes of the sitters themselves also rule the composition of the painting in a way that speaks of efficacy instead of accuracy. Hilliard insists that “the drawer should observe the eys in his pictures, making them so like one to an other, as nature doeth, giving life to his worke, for the eye is the life of the picture” (58).10 He then sets about detailing the rules of perspective governing the placement and size of the “further eye” (for those sitters pictured from a three-quarter perspective). He also advises his readers to keep in mind the “distance betwene the eye and that [first forehead] lyne” (60) at all times, the better to stick to life-like proportions. Yet over the course of the years Hilliard “increasingly flatten[ed] out the facial features, and in so doing the far eye can be misplaced and the cheek somewhat stretched” (MacLeod 27). Could this be the result of a stylistic choice rather than a deficiency? To painters on smaller-scale, eyes seem to have often occupied a specific site of reflection of / for “the true proportion and line” (Hilliard 64, my emphasis)—truth here residing in a combination of “due places” and “affectionate good Judgment” (Hilliard 56). This was already the case in Jean and François Clouet’s portraits:

L’originalité des Clouet réside surtout dans le dessin des yeux, toujours alignés et de dimensions égales, tandis que leurs prédécesseurs avaient pour habitude de représenter l’œil éloigné plus petit et plus bas. Peut-être peu respectueux de la perspective, ce procédé simple rend le visage serein et harmonieux. En diminuant légèrement la taille des iris, en réduisant la pupille à un point noir, comme contractée par une lumière intense, les Clouet confèrent en outre au regard une direction bien précise, une douceur, une acuité et une profondeur inédites.

The Clouet’s originality lies above all in the design of the eyes, which are always aligned and of equal size, whereas their predecessors were accustomed to depicting the more distant eye smaller or lower [which Hilliard recommends doing while failing to systematically apply it to his own pictures]. Although this may prove contrary to perspective rules, this simple process makes the face look serene and harmonious. By slightly diminishing the size of the irises, by reducing the pupil to a black point, as if contracted by intense light, the Clouets also give the gaze a precise direction, a softness, an acuity and a depth never seen before. (Zvereva 22)

24Although not relying upon the exact same drawing or painting techniques as Hilliard (see n. 9 above), it is rather telling that the Clouets should have interfered with scale by reducing the size of both the iris and pupil to create an even more intense and intimate encounter between the sitters and their viewers. Could Hilliard’s failure to stick to the principles of perspective he lays out for the drawing of eyes in his Arte of Limning originate from the same desire to use different scales for maximum effect? Although it is impossible to trace the changes in Hilliard’s treatment of eyes to his time in France or observation of other artists working on smaller scales, the “life” of his pictures in little depends in no small part upon a generous approach to scale and re-scaling. Far from resulting from ignorance or indifference to “rules”, Hilliard’s freedom more certainly attests to his pursuit of “life” in limning.

“La proportion des ans”: Timeliness in Scale

25The sense that his limnings could only be “true” in so far as they adapted their “rule” to the imitation of the living “face of man kind” (Hilliard 54) also proceeds from an acute sense of the relation between time, age and scale. As Hilliard himself spells out most clearly, “all men see a marvelious change in the face of mankind frome a child to an owld mane, but fewe can tell how in parts it is wrought so to change by the efect of time”. (Hilliard 62) He then proceeds to delineate carefully the said changes as they manifest on the face of a child, an adult or an old man, before concluding that Dürer’s rules of proportion for the face hold “but at rippe years, as frome fourteene to forty or fivty, or thereabouts” (Hilliard 62). Deciding on the “true” scale for one’s sitter may thus also bring about a different impression of age. This would have been true of the face as well as of the body of the sitter in full-length portraits: more often than not, failure at rendering the true height of a sitter would result in making him or her look significantly younger. In the passage immediately following Catherine’s regret that “the proportion of years and height” should be so unequal between her and Anjou (“la proportion des ans et de la taille estoit par trop inégale entre eux”), La Mothe Fénelon adds that the Queen had asked Burghley how tall the Duke really was: “à quoy il avoit respondu qu’il pouvoit estre de sa haulteur, —‘Mais de celle de vostre petit fils,’ dict elle, ainsy qu’on me l’a assuré” (“to which he had answered that he could be about as tall as he, —‘much rather of the height of your smaller child, she said, as I was assured he was,” La Mothe Fénelon 370, my translation). The parallel with Burghley’s “petit fils” (meaning little, small or “grand” as in grandson) opens up different readings of “petit,” one relating to his young age, the other to his smallness, the Queen most probably humorously meaning both. Charles IX’s complaint about Clouet’s effigy for new coins equally rested upon the idea that he had not been represented as tall and mature a man as he now was. These were common concerns: Philip Sidney himself had endured slight criticism from his “Dutch uncle” Hubert Languet regarding his Veronese portrait, as appears in a letter sent from Vienna on June 11, 1574:

Dominus Corbettus ostendit mihi tuam effigies, quam ut oculos meos explerem, per aliquot horas apud me habui, sed intuitu mea cupiditas potius aucta est, quam imminuta. Videtur mihi potius referre aliquem tui similem, quand te, & initio existimavi esse tui fratris. Pulchre quidem expressa sunt pleraque tua lineamenta, sed est longe magis juvenilis, quam deceat. Puto te fuisse non absimilem quum duodecimum, aut decimum tertium aetatis annum ageres.

[Master Corbett set your picture before me which, to fill my eyes, I kept by me for several hours, but by my gazing upon it my longing rather increased than diminished. It seems to me rather to represent someone who looks like you than you yourself, and at first I thought it was your brother. Most of your features are beautifully expressed, but it is far more youthful than it should be. I think you must have looked not unlike this when you were twelve or thirteen years old.] (Kuin 251-253)

26Tellingly enough, Languet imagines the likeness may have done justice to a much younger Sidney, young enough to have had significantly different “lineaments” and proportions about the body and the face, if we are to follow Hilliard’s description of how growing older shows in “parts” only visible by few cunning painters. The scale used to determine both the proportions of the face and the body thus also determined the imitation of the age of the sitter, which, again, had been so prominent in Elizabeth’s mordant reception of Clouet’s drawings, or in Charles IX’s reaction to his newly designed testons.

  • 11 Murrell has shown how there was no evidence whatsoever that “Hilliard made use of a mechanical dra (...)

27The challenge was even tougher for limners who only had their diminutive sheets of vellum to portray the true height and maturity of their sitters using only their eye and hand. Limners could only rely on the sharpness of their sight and steadiness of hand in drawing, thus fearing lest their natural aptness “be taken from them againe by some sudaine mischance, or by their evell coustomes, their sight, or stedines of hand decay” (Hilliard 44).11 Time was therefore crucial in the formation of the “cunning” limner’s talent for capturing the true proportion and “scantling”:

suerly he is a very wisse man that can find out the naturall Inclination of his childeren, in due time, and soe applie him that waye which nature most inclineth him […] and as for an naturall aptnes of or to painting after the liffe thosse surly which have such a guift of god ought to rejoyce with humble thankfulnes and to be very wary and temperat I diet and other government, least it be taken from them againe […]. (Hilliard 44)

28Hilliard also advises all painters thus inclined to remain ever diligent and work hard enough to avoid their god-given talent to “growe out of [them] as haire out of the head” (46). The hair loss simile also tells of the aging and delicate abilities of the limner, which were anything but stable or eternal.

Conclusion: The Meaning of Miniature

29From the time it took to make a cunning limner (however naturally apt), to the very expression of age inherent in scaling and proportioning, it seems that one of the most fundamental materials portrait miniaturists had to reckon with was indeed time. Such an imperceptible yet ubiquitous interlacing of time and space testifies to the miniature’s specific constraints and potentials, which went far beyond “measures of inches in lenght [sic], breadth, thiknes, and circumference” (Hilliard 50). The scale of pictures in small ultimately depended upon political occasions, calculations and adjustments which, I believe, may also have been on Sidney’s mind when he asked Hilliard about how to avoid the confusion between tall men and little men. This may also shed light on Sidney’s own understanding of the word “miniature.” As explained in the introduction to the present paper, the word miniature was still only rarely used and was not systematically correlated with size. Tellingly enough, the Oxford English Dictionary makes Sidney’s use of the word “miniature” in his pastoral romance the first instance of the term in print, and also the first to denote the small size of an object (Dulac 64). Late in the 1570s, or perhaps in the early 1580s, Sidney started revising the manuscript of what is now known as the “old” Arcadia. The newer version features a paragraph depicting ladies playing about in the water, blissfully unaware that they are being watched from a distance by Zelmane, a male protagonist disguised as a woman: “But as the ladies played […] in the water, sometimes striking it with the hands, the water […] seemed to smile at such beating, and with twenty bubbles, not to be content to have the picture of their face in large upon him, but he would in each of these bubbles set forth the miniature of them” (qtd in Dulac 64). As the “in large” / “miniature” dichotomy makes clear, Sidney’s understanding of “miniature” is primarily size-related. If we are to believe that his conversation with Hilliard did happen between 1578 and 1585, as suggested above, then this would coincide with the time period when he was revising The Arcadia, and further attest to the significance of size and scale in his appreciation of limning. Read against the background of Anglo-French diplomatic relations in the 1570s, the two men’s outwardly technical discussion thereby takes on far deeper political connotations.

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Bibliographie

Works cited

Primary Sources

CAMDEN, William. The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth, Late Queen of England; Containing all the Most Important and Remarkable Passages of State, both at Home and Abroad (so far as they were linked with English Affairs) during her Long and Prosperous Reign [1615]. London: M. Flesher, 1688.

HILLIARD, Nicholas. A Treatise Concerning The Arte of Limning by Nicholas Hilliard, together with A More Compendious Discourse Concerning Ye Art of Liming by Edward Norgate, ed. by R. K. R. Thornton & T. G. S. Cain. Manchester: The Mid Northumberland Arts Groups, Carcanet Press, 1992.

LA FERRIÈRE, Hector de, ed. Lettres de Catherine de Médicis: Tome Quatrième. 1570-1574. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1891.

LA MOTHE FÉNELON, Bertrand de Salignac de. Correspondance diplomatique de Bertrand de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon, ambassadeur de France en Angleterre de 1568 à 1575: Tome Quatrième. Années 1571 et 1572. Paris & London, 1840.

KUIN, Roger, ed. The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University, 2012.

NORGATE, Edward. Miniatura or the Art of Limning [1648]. Eds. Jeffrey M. Muller & Jim Murrell. New Haven & London: Yale University Press (The Paul Mellon Centre for British Art), 1997.

TOPSELL, Edward. The historie of foure-footed beastes. Describing the true and liuely figure of euery beast, with a discourse of their seuerall names, conditions, kindes, vertues (both naturall and medicinall) countries of their breed, their loue and hate to mankinde, and the wonderfull worke of God in their creation, preseruation, and destruction. Necessary for all diuines and students, because the story of euery beast is amplified with narrations out of Scriptures, fathers, phylosophers, physitians, and poets: wherein are declared diuers hyerogliphicks, emblems, epigrams, and other good histories, collected out of all the volumes of Conradus Gesner, and all other writers to this present day. London: William Jaggard, 1607.

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Notes

1 I am here using the phenomenological terminology which Étienne Jollet suggests may help us better grasp the Clouets’ works: “Il faut pour cela concevoir l’œuvre selon des formes d’intérêts différentes, ce qu’en termes phénoménologiques on appellerait des ‘visées,’ mais qui sont en l’occurrence des fonctions différentes de l’œuvre: le désir d’identification qui apparaît comme l’exigence première; le désir d’une ‘beauté’ conçue comme ‘convenance,’ adéquation à l’identité—avant tout sociale—de la personne; le désir d’œuvre, qui correspond à la volonté d’interroger le rapport entre la technique et le motif représenté” (Jollet 36).

2 These are quotes taken from the catalogue note for Piero del Pollaiuolo’s Portrait of a Youth (oil on panel, 49.2 x 35.5 cm, private collection): the picture and the note can be found at https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/evening-sale/portrait-of-a-youth-2 (last accessed 4 July 2022). Pictures by Jean and François Clouet are generally admitted to follow from—among other traditions—the realistic portraits which developed in Florence in the 1470s, around Pollaiolo, specifically so when looking at their drawings (see Jollet 28).

3 “Madame, en discourant avec la Royne d’Angleterre des choses que je mande en la lettre du Roy, nous sommes, de propos en propos, venuz à parler du pourtraict de Monseigneur vostre filz, et elle m’a dict qu’encor que ce ne soit que le créon, et que son teint n’y soit que quasi tout chafouré de charbon, si ne layssoit ce visaige de monstrer beaucoup de beaulté et beaucoup de marques de dignité et de prudence.” Nicholas Hilliard, in his Arte of Limning, tells of a conversation he had with the Queen while limning her likeness, in which she similarly expresses her aversion to the use of shadowing on the face in a portrait (hence perhaps the phrase “tout chafouré de charbon,” an undoubtedly depreciatory comment meaning “smeared with coal”), see Hilliard 65-67.

4 Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1532/3-1588) was the queen’s favourite until the 1560s when he became Privy councillor. He was one of the architects of the English policy towards France. He was also a prominent intellectual and artistic patron. His own collection of paintings (almost all portraits) was one of the largest in England at the time. The art of Nicholas Hilliard (ca. 1547-1619) as a miniature portrait painter (although he is known to have worked in various formats) gave him instant renown at court.

5 Among recent analyses of “the single most important conversation between a poet and a painter in the sixteenth century” (Hulse 103), see Hulse 1990, Callaghan 2013, Desai 2015 and Howe 2015.

6 About the many portraits that were made of Sir Philip Sidney and the clues to his knowledge of studio practices and techniques, see Strong 1990, Dulac 2015.

7 See also Duncan-Jones’s observation regarding Sidney’s height (“he may well have grown several inches”) in the 1577 Longleat portrait (84-85).

8 There remain many disagreements over the contents of and context for the letter: “As matters stand, there is considerable disagreement over the date of composition of A Letter to Queen Elizabeth, and even the circumstances surrounding its composition and distribution in manuscript are far from transparent. There is also uncertainty concerning the text itself” (Brink 1).

9 The need to accentuate size differences the better to render scale in such a tiny format appears even more clearly when comparing Hatton’s full-length miniature to a later and larger cabinet miniature of Sir Anthony Mildmay (c. 1590-1593, 23.3 x 17.4 cm, see here: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1926.554). The dog gazing at Mildmay is far bigger than Hatton’s companion not just, I believe, for reasons related to their belonging to different species. The larger, rectangular format that Hilliard used here allowed him to work with space more easily, so that Mildmay’s head and feet, for instance, dot not extend as far as the outer limits of the sheet of vellum, as was the case in Hatton’s portrait. About the size of miniatures, see also Edward Norgate’s criticism of the French taste for the tiniest formats: “You may choose your owne Table of what size you please but if you follow Order I promised in the Title we must begin with Pictures by the Life which are comonly made en petit volume in an Ovall of an indiferent size, not too large nor yet soe little as I have scene in France, about the bignes of a penny, wherein the lives and likenes must be a worke of Faith rather then Sence.” (Norgate 67).

10 About the technical construction of eyes in some of Hilliard’s miniatures see Faraday (par. 9) and Fiorillo et al.

11 Murrell has shown how there was no evidence whatsoever that “Hilliard made use of a mechanical drawing device such as that which Parker suggested that Holbein might have used,” The Arte of Limning further confirming his normal procedure consisting in working “ad vivum directly onto the vellum” (Murrell 35-36).

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1. François Clouet, Élisabeth d’Autriche (1554-1592), reine de France, femme de Charles IX, 1571.Oil on oak panel, 360 x 260 mm.
Crédits © Musée du Louvre, Département des Peintures, INV 3254; B 2371
URL http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/docannexe/image/8058/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 55k
Titre Figure 2. François Clouet, Élisabeth d’Autriche, c. 1571. Black and red chalk on paper, 342 x 231 mm.
Crédits © Paris, BNF, Estampes, Rés. Na 22
URL http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/docannexe/image/8058/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 839k
Titre Figure 3. François Clouet, c. 1571. Le futur Henri III (wrongly identified with the Duke of Alençon). Black and red chalk, 333 x 228 mm.
Crédits © Paris, BNF, Estampes, Rés. Na 22
URL http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/docannexe/image/8058/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 811k
Titre Figure 4. François Clouet, Le Duc d’Anjou, later Henri III, 1571. Crayon on paper, 32,2 x 22,4 cm. (This must be either the very drawing mentioned in Catherine’s letter or a copy thereof.)
Crédits © Département des Estampes et de la Photographie, Réserve NA-22 (12)-Boîte. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/docannexe/image/8058/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 975k
Titre Figure 5. French, 16th century, Prince Hercule-François, Duc d’Alençon, 1572. Oil on canvas. 188.6 x 102.2 cm.
Crédits © Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/docannexe/image/8058/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 488k
Titre Figure 6. Nicholas Hilliard, Henri III of France, 1576-1578. Watercolour and bodycolour on vellum laid on a playing card with five diamonds visible, 50 x 37 mm.
Crédits © Djanogly Collection.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/docannexe/image/8058/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 33k
Titre Figure 7. Nicholas Hilliard, Sir Christopher Hatton, 1588-1591. Watercolour and bodycolour and gold on vellum, laid on a playing card, 56 x 44 mm.
Crédits © Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/docannexe/image/8058/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 23k
Titre Figure 8. Illustration in Edward Topsell’s History of Four-Footed Beasts, woodcut.
Crédits © Topsell 138.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/docannexe/image/8058/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 42k
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Anne-Valérie Dulac, « Exchanging Royal Portraits Between France and England in the 1570s: The Politics of Scale »Interfaces [En ligne], 50 | 2023, mis en ligne le 31 décembre 2023, consulté le 23 mars 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/8058 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/interfaces.8058

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Auteur

Anne-Valérie Dulac

Sorbonne université

Anne-Valérie Dulac is senior lecturer in Elizabethan studies at Sorbonne Université. Her research interests cover limning and limners in early modern England, the rendering of iridescence and lustre in early modern watercolour, as well as animal-made supports (vellum, wax, ivory) for small-scale portraiture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

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