This would make a lovely forum.
Miniature portraits.
This is the poet Shelley
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A Brief History of the Miniature Portrait
by Kate Johnson
Miniatures on vellum, copper, wood, card and other surfaces were popular in the Renaissance period, with small jewel-like works by Lucas Horenbout, who painted Henry VIII in the 1520s; Hans Holbien, Nicolas Hilliard in the 16th century, and later by John Hoskins, Samuel Cooper and others. One piece by Hilliard was mounted on a playing card; three hearts are still visible, and we may wonder if there is symbolic significance in that. These gorgeous pieces appear to have been the sole province of royalty, nobility and the very rich, as most surviving examples from that period are extremely fine and beautifully wrought. They would have been beyond the reach of all but the wealthy.
Miniatures appear to have come into their own, and for a much broader spectrum of the population in the 18th Century, when they were owned by royalty, gentry, and commoner folk alike. The range of quality of extant frames and mounts, the painting surface itself, and relative skill of the painter suggest that they were much more widely available to “middling folk” as well as to the upper classes. Some surviving examples are very much in the folk art vein, unsophisticated and perhaps even crude, but charming nonetheless.
In same cases we can see the development of a talent; for instance an early self-portrait miniature by the artist John Singleton Copley is quite stiff and oversimplified compared to the confidence, energy and accuracy of his later works.
In the eighteenth century, artists on the Continent and in America were commissioned to create miniature paintings that were personal, political, erotic or otherwise. These small, portable images included likenesses of lovers and the betrothed, husbands, wives and children; kings, queens, princes, generals, consorts, and the deceased done as funeral pieces or memorials. Many of the latter showed a classical woman grieving by an urn, rather than a portrait of the deceased. Oftentimes funerary pieces were mounted in black frames embellished with pearls to symbolize the tears of the mourner, but of course pearls did not always indicate a mourning piece.
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These are modern miniatures of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra.
Below one of their children
