WHAT PEOPLE PAINTED DURING THE ERA
Artists in the Elizabethan Era drew from ideas of the European Renaissance, but they also brought uniqueness to their works and paintings. Many of the paintings created was influenced by Queen Elizabeth herself. Her image often appeared in paintings and literature, and her appreciation of many different talents raised them to a higher level of artistry.
Portraits during the Elizabethan Era are notable for their close attention to the elaborate costumes of their subjects and the richly detailed background. Upper class Elizabethans loved portrait miniatures. They were tiny, but were highly detailed, painted portraits, some as small as two inches high. The mini portraits were a unique English contribution to the Renaissance and Nicholas Hilliard was the master of art. Hilliard painted his first portrait miniature of the queen in 1572. She was wearing an elaborate black dress with white embroidered sleeves, a white rose pinned for her shoulder, and a small frill ruff. Ruffs were highly starched circular collars worn by Elizabethan men and women attached to the clothing or as a separate garment. Brightly colored gold lettering surrounded the queen’s head and the miniature was painted in watercolor on the back of the queen of hearts playing card. Hilliard’s talent for lifelike representation of the physical world is obvious in his detailed depictions of Elizabethan clothing. He invented many new methods of painting details of his subjects clothing and accessories. For example, he portrayed the starched crispness of lace ruffs by painting the complicated lace patterns with a brush loaded with white lead. When the lead loaded paint dried, the lace patterns stood up in relief. He used real gold and silver in his paint, which was polished with a small animal tooth to create the tiny, perfect surfaces of gleaming metal. To represent the diamonds, he drew and shaded the cut of the stone with transparent black and gray over polished silver. Hilliard was also highly skilled at capturing his subject's' character and appearance. It is largely thanks to him that we know what leading figures of Elizabethan days look like. (Art on left drawn by Nicholas Hilliard during the Elizabethan Era)
|