Visualising Childhood in the Tudor Era

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