Karen Hearn Orden de los libros

Published to accompany the exhibition held at the Foundling Museum, 24 January - 26 April 2020.

A small in-focus book on the significant but hitherto under studied English- born painter Cornelius Johnson. Johnson's portraits are of exceptional quality, and, uniquely for a British artist of the period, he worked on every scale, from large groups to miniatures

Nicholas Hilliard's portrait miniatures open a remarkable window on to the highest levels of English society in the later years of the sixteenth and the early years of the seventeenth century - the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages. It is impossible to remain immune to their charm and charisma.Hilliard's images show us the features of many celebrities of his time with a comparative naturalism that is usually absent from the large-scale paintings of his contemporaries. Hilliard has helped form our ideas of the appearance of among others, Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, Sir Francis Drake, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Sir Walter Ralegh and James I.