Artifact World Gallery
Get the iOS app

Sir Anthony Mildmay, Knight of Apethorpe, Northamptonshire by Nicholas Hilliard

Nicholas Hilliard · 1590-01-01

View the artwork: Sir Anthony Mildmay, Knight of Apethorpe, Northamptonshire →

This is Nicholas Hilliard’s portrait miniature of Sir Anthony Mildmay, painted on vellum around 1590 and now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Mildmay was a Northamptonshire landowner, a courtier to Elizabeth I, and an ambassador to France. The portrait is unusually large for a miniature, Hilliard was consciously rivaling life-size court portraits. And everything you need to know about the sitter is right there in the paint.

Look at the armor. Hilliard used shell gold, a costly material, to build up the gleam of the steel breastplate in tiny, deliberate strokes. Mildmay is shown mid-scene, his helmet and gauntlets scattered on the ground as though arming was interrupted. His left hand grips a rapier hilt; his gaze is direct and composed. The portrait is a performance of readiness and rank.

Then look at the dog. A small white terrier looks up at Mildmay with complete, unquestioning adoration. The museum notes this detail gently: Mildmay had a reputation for arrogance among his contemporaries. Hilliard, a shrewd observer of the Elizabethan court, was almost certainly in on the joke.

The portrait stayed in Mildmay’s family for more than three centuries, descending through his daughter and later the Fane and Stapleton families before being sold at Christie’s in 1926 and acquired by Cleveland the same year. Someone in that long line must have recognized the portrait’s honesty, pride and irony held together in a few square inches of vellum.

#arthistory #portraitminiature #nicholashilliard

Details

The museum's gentle irony: a faithfully upward-gazing dog for a man notorious for arrogance , the most legible hidden joke in the composition.
The museum's gentle irony: a faithfully upward-gazing dog for a man notorious for arrogance , the most legible hidden joke in the composition.
Hilliard applied costly shell gold in tiny brushstrokes to simulate steel gleam on vellum , the technique that made this miniature famous and unusually large for the medium.
Hilliard applied costly shell gold in tiny brushstrokes to simulate steel gleam on vellum , the technique that made this miniature famous and unusually large for the medium.
The composed, slightly haughty expression is the psychological center of the portrait , pride legible even at miniature scale.
The composed, slightly haughty expression is the psychological center of the portrait , pride legible even at miniature scale.
The draped pavilion fabric situates the scene at a tournament ground or military camp and gives Hilliard a geometric abstraction to contrast the organic figure.
The draped pavilion fabric situates the scene at a tournament ground or military camp and gives Hilliard a geometric abstraction to contrast the organic figure.
The jettisoned tournament helmet with its extravagant plumage implies interrupted arming , the scene's narrative hook and a display of rank simultaneously.
The jettisoned tournament helmet with its extravagant plumage implies interrupted arming , the scene's narrative hook and a display of rank simultaneously.
Transcript

This man wanted you to see his armor. Shell gold, brushed on vellum. Costly and slow. He was a knight, a landowner, an ambassador to France. Now look down. A small dog gazes up with total devotion. Contemporaries knew Mildmay for his arrogance. The painter knew too. His family held onto the portrait for over three hundred years.