MINIATURE PAINTING. A late develop ment of the art of manuscript illumination ap plied to portraiture. (See MANUSCRIPTS, NATION or.) The illuminators of the latter part of the sixteenth century. headed by Giulio Clovio, had made the art in its dying days far more transparent in coloring. more fects in grisaille and coniaien led the way to miniatures. When there were no longer any manuscripts to illuminate. the art turned to minute detached and framed pictures still ed on vellum, and related to these were minute paintings on copper, especially by the Doteh School. The new branch of minute portraiture was a creation of North European art of the seventeenth, and especially the eighteenth. century. It. was foreign to Italy. Spain, and Southern France and flourished in Germany. England. Northern France. and the Nether lands. It was especially suited to portraying the Court costumes of the times of Louis XIV. and NV.
The miniature portraits were usually of oval shape and only two to four inches high: they were usually painted on vellum or ivory. but sometimes 011 heavy glazed paper. wood. enamel, or poreelaill. The forerunners of the true turists had often painted in oils on copper or silver; vellum was the favorite material 01 the seventeenth eentury, and ivory was largely in troduced during the eighteenth century.
The normal method was to use opaque body colors on the vellum, that is, colors mixed with white and other opaque pigments: but when ivory came into use, transparent colors were used large ly on faces and all other nude parts, the opaque colors being confined to the draperies, hair, and necessaries. Transparent effects gradually passed from the hest tints even to the other parts of the picture, Si, that but little that opaque re mained. The practice up to about 1750 was first to
lay the colors on in broad flat tom* and then to work over with dotting or stippling until an ex quisite but comewhat finical jewellike effect was attained. toward a Swede named Ball utilized the natural tones of the newly popular ivory gro 1 in favor of new ent and textures. using gonaelor water color effects With a manner at one,' 110141 and Afterwards, the breadth of pos-ilde fects was increased by the use of !Welling as a method.
Among Isaac Oliver and his son Peter Oliver were among the earliest in England. and were followed, later in the seventeenth tury. by Samuel Cooper. whose reputation spread to France and Holland. Blaerenberghe, of the Dutch School. was prominent under Louis XV. Rosabela Carriera. Isabey, some pupils of like Lebrun, Prevot. and Cherlier, made his cate style popular. until Francois Dumont in the time of Alarie Antoinette combined it with the inure transparent and free style of Hall 8101 so set a new fashion. The name of Angelica Kauf man is popularly well known in this connection. After a period of almost complete extinction during the greater part of the nineteenth cen tury, the art has lately been revived with suc cess. Museums have made collections: there are over two hundrod in the Dresden Gallery. lint private individuals own by far the larger number of extant miniatures.
Consult: Bradley, Dictionary of Miniaturists (London, 1887-S9) ; Proport, History of Minia ture .1 rt (ib., ISS7) : Williamson, Portrait Min iatures front Holbein to Ross (ib.. 1897). See also the authorities referred to under IIANU SclurrS, OF.