“….It all started with a chance encounter. A young woman, resplendent in an Elizabethan gown embroidered with stars, her lovely face framed by an exquisite lace ruff, stared out of a cabinet miniature at art historians Elizabeth Goldring and Emma Rutherford. They had come upon the portrait in a private collection and it quickly transpired that it was completely unknown to other specialists. Several clues, from style to materials and technique, pointed to pre-eminent Elizabethan miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard, making this his only known completed cabinet miniature of a female sitter — but who was the mystery woman?….”
I can well imagine the excitement of our two intrepid art historians. The game was afoot!
In their search they were to come upon the meticulous accounts of Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, “Bess of Hardwick”, who in July 1592 had apparently paid the miniature artist Hilliard for a work, probably a likeness of Lady Arbella Stuart, her granddaughter. Arbella was a “….great-great-granddaughter of Henry VII), whom the Countess had raised….”
So, is the newly-discovered miniature a portrait of Arbella? Her story may or may not be known to you already, but there is such a lot to tell about her and the miniature that I will not embark upon it here. You can find out about it all in the links below:
(2) Rare portrait of ‘England’s lost queen’ discovered by Warwick historians – BBC News
(3) https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/?newsItem=8a1785d78f95a715018fde3fcac34867
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