Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, c.1612-16 (w/c on vellum)

Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford (1581-1627) Lucy Harington, daughter of John, Lord Harington of Exton, married in 1594 Edward Russell, third Earl of Bedford. A lady-in-waiting to Anne of Denmark, she was a patron of artists and writers and a central figure in the cultural life of the Jacobean court. Isaac Oliver, his career as a miniaturist in the ascendant under the patronage of Anne of Denmark and Henry, Prince of Wales, was the natural choice to paint such a key figure on this scale, and several versions of this miniature are recorded (Cleveland Museum of Art; Christie's, London, 15 October 1996, lot 3; Castle Howard, Yorkshire). A large, circular miniature of the same sitter by Isaac Oliver (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) is one of the most ambitious and successful works of his career. In the Fitzwilliam miniature, the Countess is shown at the slightly earlier date of c.1605 in an elaborately embroidered dress, with tight curls and a wired headpiece; in the later miniature in the Royal Collection she appears, Titania-like, with her abundant hair falling loose over her shoulders, framed by a transparent gauze veil. The coronet she wears may be a Countess's coronet, or an element of fantastical, possibly masque, costume.