Visiting Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion? You must join the virtual exhibition queue when you arrive. If capacity has been reached for the day, the queue will close early.

Learn more
European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Reynolds, Graham, with the assistance of Katharine Baetjer
1996
208 pages
399 illustrations
View More Publication Info

Miniatures are evocative objects, sometimes of great technical virtuosity and often of compelling historical interest. They have enormous appeal not only for the scholarly community but also for a more general audience. This publication is a catalogue of the Metropolitan Museum's permanent collection of more than three hundred European miniatures. In origin these works fall into three categories—British, French, and Continental—and date from the early sixteenth century to about 1850. The collection includes one of two known portrait miniatures by Jean Clouet, who is credited with originating this genre, and three of no more than twenty recognized portrait miniatures by Hans Holbein the Younger, the first great master of this art. Most of the important figures in this field—Hilliard, Hoskins, Cooper, Hall, Fuger, Zincke, Cosway, and Isabey—are represented, as are several painters who worked primarily in larger formats—Fragonard, the Van Blarenberghes, and Rosalba Carriera, for example. The majority of the miniatures are hitherto unpublished.

Charles de Cossé (1506–1563), Count of Brissac, Jean Clouet  French, Vellum
ca. 1535
William Roper (1493/94–1578), Hans Holbein the Younger  German, Vellum laid on card
1535–36
Margaret Roper (Margaret More, 1505–1544), Hans Holbein the Younger  German, Vellum laid on playing card
1535–36
Thomas Wriothesley (1505–1550), First Earl of Southampton, Hans Holbein the Younger  German, Vellum laid on card
ca. 1535
Portrait of a Man, Said to Be Arnold Franz, Hans Holbein the Younger  German, Vellum laid on card
Portrait of a Young Man, Probably Robert Devereux (1566–1601), Second Earl of Essex, Nicholas Hilliard  British, Vellum laid on card
1588
Portrait of a Woman, Nicholas Hilliard  British, Vellum
1597
Portrait of a Moravian Woman, Pieter Pietersz the Younger  Netherlandish, Vellum
Gaspard de Daillon du Lude (ca. 1602–1676), Jacques Saillant  French, Vellum stretched over copper
1628
Portrait of a Man, Jacques Saillant  French, Vellum stretched over wood
ca. 1628
Vertumnus and Pomona, Thomas Lefebure  Flemish, Paper
1676
Dr. Brian Walton (born about 1600, died 1661), John Hoskins  British, Vellum laid on card
1657
Henry Carey (1596–1661), Second Earl of Monmouth, Samuel Cooper  British, Vellum on prepared card
1649
Portrait of a Woman, Thomas Forster  British, Plumbago on vellum
1700
Portrait of a Man, Thomas Forster  British, Plumbago on vellum
1700
Abbé Charles Bossut (1730–1814), Pierre Pasquier  French, Enamel
1772
Portrait of a Boy, Marie Anne Gérard Fragonard (Madame Fragonard)  French, Ivory
ca. 1775
The Painter Louis Joseph Maurice (1730–1820), Peter Adolf Hall  Swedish, Ivory
1772
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), after a Painting by Greuze of 1777, Charles Paul Jérôme de Bréa  French, Ivory
1777
Louis XVI (1754–1793), King of France, Jean Laurent Mosnier  French, Ivory
1790
Showing 20 of 74

View Citations

Reynolds, Graham, and Katharine Baetjer. 1996. European Miniatures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: the Metropolitan museum of art distributed by H. N. Abrams.