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James I (1566-1625)
Nicholas Hilliard was the pre-eminent miniature painter at the court of Elizabeth I. By the time of James I's accession in 1603 his style was already beginning to seem outdated, particularly in comparison to that of his pupil and rising star, Isaac Oliver (c. 1565-1617), whose cosmopolitan style appealed to James I's Queen, Anne of Denmark. Nonetheless, James appointed Hilliard as his Court Limner, with responsibility for producing portrait miniatures of the King, and of his sons, Henry Prince of Wales and Prince Charles. As late as 1617, only two years prior to Hilliard's death, this patronage was endorsed by the granting of a twelve-year monopoly of royal portraits to Hilliard in recognition of the artist's 'extraordinary art and skill in drawing, graving and imprinting of pictures and representations of us and others'. Three distinct types of miniature of James I have been identified by Graham Reynolds, and the present miniature belongs to the earliest group datable to soon after the king's accession (c. 1603-8). Other examples of this type, which depict the king wearing a plumed hat with a white embroidered doublet and the ribbon of the Order of the Garter, are in the Victoria and Albert Museum (P. 3-1957) and the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna (no. 215)
aristocrat
/ head and shoulders
/ man
/ royal
/ royalty
/ hat
/ oval
/ aristocracy
/ england
/ northern renaissance
/ britain
/ british
/ order of the garter
/ male
/ miniature
/ king
/ english
/ Renaissance
/ jacobean
/ james i
/ tudor
/ Painting
/ Mzpainting
