Nicholas Hilliard English artist, jeweler and manuscript illustrator Country: Great Britain

Biography of Nicholas Hilliard

Nicholas Hilliard was an English artist, jeweler, and manuscript illuminator, renowned for his portrait miniatures depicting the courtiers of Elizabeth and James I. He was born the son of Richard Hilliard (1519–1594), a jeweler and devout Protestant from Exeter, Devon, who also served as sheriff of the city and county in 1560. His mother was Lawrence, the daughter of John Wall, a London jeweler. It is likely that at a young age, Hilliard was taken into the household of prominent Exeter Protestant John Bodley (father of Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Library in Oxford). When Mary Tudor ascended the throne, John Bodley went into exile, and on May 8, 1557, 10-year-old Hilliard was among those who accompanied him as his servants to Geneva. It was in Geneva that Hilliard learned the German language. Thomas Bodley, who was two years older than him, continued his classical education in the Swiss capital under leading scholars, but it is unclear whether Hilliard studied with him. At the age of 13, Hilliard painted a self-portrait, and it is claimed that he painted Mary Stuart when he was 18. He apprenticed to the queen's goldsmith, Robert Brandon, who was a master of the goldsmith's craft and treasurer of the City of London. It is also believed that Hilliard may have studied painting with Levina Teerlink, the daughter of Simon Bening, the last great master of the Flemish manuscript illumination tradition, who served as a court artist for Henry VIII after the death of Hans Holbein. After seven years of apprenticeship, Hilliard was admitted as a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths in 1569 and opened a workshop with his younger brother, John. Their second brother was also a jeweler, and the youngest was a priest. In 1576, he married Brandon's daughter, Alice, who bore him seven children. He mostly painted small round miniatures, but among his works are also several larger ones (about 15 cm) and at least two full-length portraits of Queen Elizabeth. Throughout his 45-year artistic career, the master enjoyed constant fame and financial difficulties. His works are some of the best illustrations of the history of Elizabethan England, significantly different from what was happening on the continent. Technically, Hilliard was a very conservative artist (compared to the situation with painting in Europe), but his portraits possess such virtuosity of execution, freshness, and charm that Hilliard rightfully stands as the "central artistic figure of the Elizabethan era, the only English artist whose works reflect, as if in a single drop, the world of early Shakespearean plays."