English sixteenth century portraits of children are rare, and when they were portrayed the child's maturity was often exaggerated.
This overstated association with adulthood is apparent in this portrait of a young three-year-old girl.
Her maturity appears to have been exaggerated to the extent that her silhouette alludes to that of a grown woman; her intricately decorative, fitted gown which cinches in her narrow, idealised waist.
This portrait is exhibited in our exhibition Love's Labour's Found: Elizabethan & Jacobean Portraiture | 21 April - 18 May 2021
