Catharine MacLeod Livres

The National Portrait Gallery, London, holds a large collection of portraits featuring sitters who have played an important role in British history and culture across the periods, many of which have also made significant contributions as writers. 100 Writers will be the first Gallery publication to bring together portraits of writers from varied disciplines and periods into one publication. An illustrated introductory text will explore the range of writers' portraits held in the Gallery and the important role they have played in British culture. It will also look at the relationship between the written word and visual arts, encompassing the variety of writers and themes. This new title will include earlier sixteenth-century works through to contemporary portraits, with a focus on writers who have made an important contribution to a number of areas such as literature, history, philosophy and politics. Select works will also be accompanied by quotations taken from interviews, essays and acclaimed works by a number of the writers. The book will be of the same compact format as earlier 100s titles such as 100 Photographs and 100 Portraits and will be a welcome addition to this series of books, presenting highlights from the collection through the lens of literature.

Four centuries ago, England was famous primarily for its literary culture - the drama of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and the works of the lyrical and metaphysical poets. When it came to the production of visual art, the country was seen as something of a backwater. However, there was one art form for which English artists of this period were renowned : portrait miniature painting, or as it was known at the time, limning. Growing from roots in manuscript illumination, it was brought to heights of skill by two artists in particular: Nicholas Hilliard (1547? - 1619) and Isaac Oliver (c. 1565 - 1617). In addition to exhibiting the technique of the artists, portrait miniatures express in a unique way many of the most distinctive and fascinating aspects of court life in this period: ostentatious secrecy, games of courtly love, arcane symbolism, a love of intricacy and decoration. Bedecked in lace, encrusted in jewellery and sprinkled with flowers, court ladies smile enigmatically at the viewer; their male counterparts rest on grassy banks or lean against trees, sighing over thwarted love, or more modestly express their hopes in Latin epigrams inscribed around their heads. Often set in enamelled and jewelled gold lockets, or turned ivory or ebony boxes, such miniatures could be concealed or revealed, exchanged or kept, as part of elaborate processes of friendship, love, patronage and diplomacy at the courts of Elizabeth I and James I /VI . This illustrated book, like the exhibition it accompanies, explores what the portrait miniature reveals about identity, society and visual culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England