Interfaces ()
Exchanging Royal Portraits Between France and England in the 1570s: The Politics of Scale
Abstract
This article centres around Nicholas Hilliard and Sir Philip Sidney’s discussion of scale and proportion, as it is reported in The Arte of Limning. I argue that although the conversation has heretofore mainly been read as an echo of Sidney’s interest in Continental humanistic art theories, it may also allude to previous diplomatic and political negotiations between France and England in which the two men were involved. Looking into diplomatic correspondence and various portraits by the Clouets and Nicholas Hilliard, one quickly realises how the expression of age and height was central to all forms and formats of political portraiture on both sides of the Channel, thereby making it even more crucial and possibly challenging for artists working on smaller scales. I thus turn to Hilliard’s description of his workshop procedure to see how he incorporated such issues of scale into his own practice. This finally leads me to analyse the importance of time in all measurements—as empirical as they may be—favoured by the limner and reassess the profoundly political issue of discerning a tall man from a little man on pictures in small volume.
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