Isaac OliverFrench, 1556–1617Jesus Christ
May one see it?
Yes, receiving visitors
London, United Kingdom
RoomPortrait Miniatures, Room 90a, The International Music and Art Foundation Gallery
On public display.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the painting
This miniature is quite unlike anything else that Isaac Oliver is known to have painted. The image is built up entirely in terms of light and shade, stippled with tiny flecks of paint, without the definitive outline that had been the ideal of Nicholas Hilliard and other early miniature painters. Oliver is here striving to copy the effects of Italian Baroque painting, with its misty religiosity. This miniature was in the collection of the famous 18th-century collector Dr Richard Mead, and was particularly admired at that time for the soft-focus effect of its extraordinary stipple technique, which was reminiscent of the work of the Italian artist Antonio Correggio (1489-1534). When it was painted, however, there was little interest among English patrons for anything other than portraiture, and one can only speculate for whom such a work would have been intended.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- P.15-1931
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Victoria and Albert Museum
- Image: Victoria and Albert Museum — © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
