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This exceptionally vibrant miniature is in extraordinarily good condition. Its colours – most notably, its brilliant oranges, which ‘pop’ against Oliver’s solid blue background and against the black elements of the sitter’s dress – are virtually unfaded and undimmed with the passage of time.
The identity of the sitter, who has chosen to be portrayed in an androgynous fashion, is unknown.[1] But her attire and general self-presentation are suggestive of a spirited, perhaps slightly rebellious nature. Flowing tresses worn down rather than up were a sign that a lady was unmarried (or in masquing costume).[2] Yet the ‘love lock’, in which one section of hair was left to grow longer than the rest so that it could be brought forward – as depicted in this miniature – was predominantly a male fashion.[3] In short, Oliver’s sitter seems to be the sort of young lady the anonymous author of the 1620 pamphlet Hic Mulier (‘The Man-Woman’) had in mind when railing...
This exceptionally vibrant miniature is in extraordinarily good condition. Its colours – most notably, its brilliant oranges, which ‘pop’ against Oliver’s solid blue background and against the black elements of the sitter’s dress – are virtually unfaded and undimmed with the passage of time.
The identity of the sitter, who has chosen to be portrayed in an androgynous fashion, is unknown.[1] But her attire and general self-presentation are suggestive of a spirited, perhaps slightly rebellious nature. Flowing tresses worn down rather than up were a sign that a lady was unmarried (or in masquing costume).[2] Yet the ‘love lock’, in which one section of hair was left to grow longer than the rest so that it could be brought forward – as depicted in this miniature – was predominantly a male fashion.[3] In short, Oliver’s sitter seems to be the sort of young lady the anonymous author of the 1620 pamphlet Hic Mulier (‘The Man-Woman’) had in mind when railing against the ‘insolencie of our women, and theyre wearing of brode brimd hats [and] pointed dublets’.[4]
Certainly, the broad-brimmed hat and pointed doublet worn by this sitter are masculine in style. As is clear from both written and visual evidence, ladies at the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean courts often donned such attire for hunting, as may be seen in Paul van Somer’s life-sized oil painting of Anne of Denmark with her horse and hounds (1617), now in the Royal Collection.[5] Sometimes, too, ladies wore such garb when ‘in character’ for a court masque or other entertainment. For example, the text of Ben Jonson’s Masque of Queens – performed at Whitehall Palace in 1609 by Queen Anne and eleven noblewomen – indicates that Hypsicratea, Queen of Pontus made her entrance wearing ‘a masculine habit’.[6]
Large jewelled aigrettes like the one affixed to this sitter’s hat were usually a male accessory and often a martial one at that. That said, one of Nicholas Hilliard’s ‘mask of youth’ miniatures of Elizabeth I, probably dating from the mid-1590s, depicts a similar aigrette in the hair of the Queen, herself no stranger to androgynous self-presentation (fig. 24, p. 40). In 1588, when rallying the English troops at Tilbury in anticipation of the expected invasion by the Spanish Armada, Elizabeth famously had declared that, though she had ‘the body of a weak and feeble woman’, she possessed ‘the heart and stomach of a king’.[7]
Note, in Oliver’s rendering, the way in which the pearl suspended from the sitter’s aigrette tilts to one side, the angle of the tilt paralleled by that of the pearl suspended from her proper left ear. It is a lovely detail – typical of Oliver at the height of his powers – which ‘humanises’ the miniature, whilst reinforcing the viewer’s sense of the character of the individual portrayed: in this case, that we are looking at a lady of action, who has paused only briefly from her daily whirligig of hunting and/ or masquing to enable Oliver to take her likeness. In all probability, the sitting took many hours – perhaps spread over multiple days – and no doubt the sitter’s pose and attire were carefully planned. But Oliver here creates the illusion of immediacy, still palpable some 400 years later, of having captured the sitter in medias res, her pendant pearls still in motion, as if she has only just this moment rushed into his studio and taken a seat in front of him.
Like jewelled aigrettes, sashes were a traditional signifier of male military rank (particularly if worn over armour). It is not immediately clear why this sitter should have chosen to be portrayed with a sash, much less such a bright orange one – though its inclusion is likely to have had a highly specific meaning both for the sitter and the miniature’s intended recipient. Perhaps one, or both, had familial links to the ongoing revolt of the Protestant United Provinces of the Netherlands against Catholic Spain. The colour orange was, for many English Protestants, closely associated with the United Provinces, whose first leader had been William the Silent (1533–1584), also known as William of Orange.[8]
The sitter’s decision to be portrayed bare-handed rather than wearing gloves (then, as now, an integral component of riding attire, as can be seen in van Somer’s 1617 portrait of Anne of Denmark) enables the long, elegant fingers of her proper right hand to be showcased. Her pose – caressing her lovelock and cradling it to her proper left breast or heart – was doubtless intended as an erotic gesture. Presumably, the sitter commissioned this miniature for presentation of a love token. If the miniature was encased in a locket, as was often the case in this period, it is tempting to speculate that she may have placed an actual lock of her own hair inside, alongside the miniature.
[1] Although it has been suggested that the sitter could be a ‘baby-faced young man’, such a view has not gained widespread currency. See Susan North, ‘Fashion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Miniatures,’ in Lawrence Hendra, Emma Rutherford, et al., Jewel in the Hand: Early Portrait Miniatures from Noble & Private Collections (London: Philip Mould & Company, 2019), pp. 104–11 (at p. 111). When exhibited at the V&A in 1983 and at Philip Mould & Co. in 2019, the accompanying catalogue entries both identified the sitter as a young lady. Although many components of the sitter’s attire were worn by both ladies and gentlemen at the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean courts, it would have been most unusual for a gentleman to have worn an earring in each ear (as seen in this miniature). See Diana Scarisbrick, Jewellery in Britain, 1066–1837: A Documentary, Social, Literary and Artistic Survey (London: Michael Russell, 1994), pp. 119–21.
[2] For hair in relation to a lady’s marital status, see Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, p. 60.
[3] Charlotte Calasibetta et al., Fairchild’s Dictionary of Fashion (London: Bloomsbury, 2003), p. 225.
[4] Quoted in Reynolds, In Fine Style, p. 261. Many early seventeenth-century sermons expressed similar views.
[5] For ladies’ hunting attire, see Reynolds, In Fine Style, pp. 258–61.
[6] See Nichols, The Progresses, Processions and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First, vol. 2, p. 239. Although costume designs, by Inigo Jones, survive for many of the Queens featured in The Masque of Queens, that for Hypsicratea is not extant.
[7] The speech in question was delivered on 9 August 1588.
[8] Sir Robert Sidney, when appointed Governor of Vlissingen in 1588, commemorated the occasion by commissioning an oil painting of himself wearing an orange doublet and an orange sash, now in the National Portrait Gallery (NPG 1862). See Elizabeth Goldring, ‘“So lively a portraiture of his miseries”: Melancholy, Mourning and the Elizabethan Malady,’ The British Art
Journal, 6.2 (autumn 2005), pp. 12–22 (esp. p. 14).
