Masterpieces in Little: Portrait Miniatures from the Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

by Christopher Lloyd

This catalogue accompanies the exhibition of portrait miniatures from the Royal Collection to be shown in 1996-97 at the Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Huntington Library, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The artists range from Lucas Hornebolte, Henry VIII's limner, painting in the 1520s, to Sir William Charles Ross and his Victorian contemporaries. The collection has particular strengths in the Tudor and Stuart period and there are fine examples of the work of Hans Holbein the Younger, Nicholas Hilliard, Isaac and Peter Oliver, John Hoskins, Samuel Cooper, Jean Petitot and Charles Boit; eighteenth-century miniaturists include C.F. Zincke, Jeremiah Meyer and Richard Cosway. Theseventy-five miniatures are illustrated in colour, each with an extended catalogue entry. Three introductory essays discuss the formation of the Royal Collection; the development of the miniature, its style and technique; and the social history of the miniature. There is a full bibliography. CHRISTOPHER LLOYD is Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures; VANESSA REMINGTON works for the Royal Collection Trust.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published February 5, 1997

About the author

Christopher Lloyd CVO is a British art historian and was Surveyor of The Queen's Pictures (1988–2005). Lloyd worked in the Department of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford for twenty years. In 1972, he was appointed to a fellowship at Harvard University's Center for Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, in Florence, Italy. During 1980–81, he was a visiting research curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, concentrating on the art of early Italy.