Nicholas Hilliard’s miniature portraits provide an important record of Elizabethan court life. We publish here a remarkable discovery which adds significantly to his known work: a large ‘cabinet’ miniature, identified by Elizabeth Goldring and Emma Rutherford as a portrait of Lady Arbella Stuart, granddaughter of Bess of Hardwick and a possible successor to the throne. The circumstances of the commission are bound up with a fascinating episode of late Elizabethan spycraft.
So much effort has been focused on naming the horses in George Stubbs’ paintings – the defining equestrian masterpieces of the eighteenth century – that the people in his pictures have received less attention. Theodore Mould’s article helps to rectify this by identifying Philip John Nigohrus, known as Philippo, as the ‘Turkish groom’ in the artist’s celebrated painting of the Duke of Ancaster’s grey horse. A successful Ottoman Armenian merchant, Philippo imported horses to Britain and shared manufacturing secrets at the Society of Arts, London. The April issue also includes Peter Rumley’s analysis of the ballroom wing at Buckingham Palace and its Renaissance-revival decoration in the 1850s, as well as Susie Beckham’s research on the first public naming of the Pre-Raphaelites.
Exhibition reviews include Elizabeth Pergam on the new installation of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Joseph Connors assesses the Museo della Forma Urbis, Rome. Book reviews feature Ariane Verela Braga on Owen Jones, Deborah Howard on Santa Maria Novella, Giulio Dalvit on Lorenzo Ghiberti and Larry Silver on Indecent Bodies.
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