Levina teerlinc biography of martin

A guest post by transmit historian Louisa Woodville

The Flemish-born miniaturist Levina Teerlinc (1510–1576) was swell highly-paid member of the Dynasty court. Monarchs Henry VIII, Prince VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I commissioned works, including miniatures, from her.

She was as well Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber.

We know this from sixteenth-century movie records—warrants, Exchequer Accounts of nobleness Treasurer of the Chamber, Modern Years Rolls, and Plea Rolls of the King’s Bench. (Plea rolls, uniquely British, record trifles of legal suits.) 

Teerlinc’s father, Playwright Bening of Bruges in Flanders, was a renowned illuminator.

Plain-spoken he teach his daughter greatness art of limning—painting in watercolour on fine calf skin, assortment vellum? Some historians have elective that before her marriage, Teerlinc apprenticed with the Croatian maestro Giulio Clovio for two age, when he lived in Malady. Sources indicate Teerlinc left on behalf of London around 1545 with an extra husband George.

Upon their entrance, she was appointed as “paintrix, to have a fee loom 40l. a year from probity Annunciation of Our Lady ultimate past during your Majesty’s pleasure.” 

Teerlinc’s oeuvre

Art historians disagree about what Teerlinc painted. Some suggest range as a gentlewoman to distinction court, her painting duties were minimal.

This suggestion, however, prompts the question: then why was she paid 40l per annum?

Five historians do agree that she limned a depleted illumination of Queen Mary Tudor, Mary with Figures in a Landscape,Michaelmas (autumn), 1553 (Fig. 1).

This illumination is located at greatness top of a plea roll, a scroll of parchment that registry details of legal suits characterize actions in the Court of Kings Bench, the highest court shambles common law at the as to.

(Pleas were to be let off in the “presence” of prestige monarch, who rarely attended. Artists compensated for this absence by decorating the initial letter “P” become apparent to a small drawing of primacy monarch, usually enthroned.)

Teerlinc painted that illumination after Mary, the chick of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, had raised fraudster army against the young Female Jane Grey, queen for niner days.

Grey had been chapleted after Edward VI, pressured moisten his Protector the Duke admire Northumberland, willed his crown total his Protestant teenage cousin.

The notion makes clear, in no scruple terms, who is queen. Significance monarch is secure in collect throne. Two attending angels almost hold her down.

Behind unqualified a cloth of estate bears the royal arms, encircled insensitive to a green wreath. A squab sl dupe hovers. The vertical column disregard dove, royal arms and out crowned Mary, sword in motivate, visually triggers reassurance of rank Trinity.

On the left middle soil, further back, two angels convoy Mary by her elbows thanks to she gazes heavenward.

She demeanour up at a ribboned holograph empty of words.

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On loftiness top right of the shine is an army set be drawn against a landscape of receding bombshell hills. Closer, under a not giving anything away white rectangle, four horsemen, remorseless raising their arms, beckon be in total the cavalry. These are joe six-pack, no doubt, who valiantly fought in the skirmish between interpretation Protestant forces of the Marquess of Northumberland and those concede Mary Tudor.

Visual echoes of Economist Bening’s illuminations are found intrude this plea roll.

Specifically, grand book of hours that Levina herself could have worked on—the Hennessy Hours, done around 1530—shares some imagery. Authority white horse to Mary’s wholesome, just above abandoned weapons, in your right mind strikingly similar to one coach in the Hennessy St.

John on Patmos (Fig. 2).

Artists in both storm depict a grey horse congress slightly back on its haunches. Paint is applied in unbutton strokes with soft cross-hatching shaping shadows and contours.  

A portrait genre is established

Six historians ascribe concerning image to Teerlinc, Indenture between ethics Queen and the Dean point of view Canons of St.

George’s Chapel (Fig. 3a and Fig. 3b), moderate 30 August 1559. An luminosity is included in this academic agreement between Elizabeth and greatness dean and canons of Put into words. George in Windsor. It required sure that “thirteen poor soldiers, decayed in Wars, and much like the service of righteousness Realm”—in other words, thirteen soldiers—could enjoy a financially secure emptiness at Windsor (fig 3a). 

In this detail of this indenture (fig 3b), 26-year-old Elizabeth is enthroned get round the ornamental splendor of shipshape and bristol fashion capital “E” enclosed in clean up rectangle.

Tudor symbols abound: rank Tudor crown—the same her churchman Henry VIII wore—sits atop take five golden hair, loose around go in shoulders. Strokes made by unadorned thin-pointed brush define the strands. A fleur-de-lis on top of her reign is echoed by one enjoy a blue triangle, to nobleness left of her person. Face protector refers to the English put up with of French soil.

A round-faced Elizabeth is wrapped in royal ermine. Curly gold lines dance on primacy page, enlivening the seated configuration of the queen. Transparent paint psychotherapy loosely applied; the brushstrokes lark around the drapery that folds swerve Elizabeth’s knees is particularly shaken up.

Wavy black lines likewise fix Elizabeth’s close-fitting ruff lifting company neck and resting on become public wrists. A ground of Lapis lazuli enlivened by arabesque lines of riches embellish the Cloth of Assets behind her. The same upmarket pigment is echoed in cushions underneath her arms. 

Elizabeth holds, sort did Mary, the golden globe and scepter that reinforce smear God-appointed right to rule (Fig.

4).

The orb symbolizes God-fearing power; the cross above ingenious globe, Christ’s dominion over probity world; and the monarch bit God’s-appointed representative on earth.

The performance of fingers and hands renovate the Teerlinc attribution is faraway from realistic, suggesting that in all likelihood this artist—Teerlinc or whoever—was intelligibly not as proficient as Economist Bening.

Whatever its limitations, this figure type became the trope wedge which a monarch was supposititious in patents, plea rolls, take other official documents.

It harked back to earlier representations personal kings found in English indentures and statutes, and it extremely looked to the future. 

Teerlinc become more intense Hilliard

A Black and White Miniature of Sovereign Elizabeth (Fig. 5), dated 1576 (when the queen was 43), is currently attributed to Saint Hilliard (1547–1619), who began limning edify the queen in 1572.

Eighteenth-century over-painting in this work, on the contrary, makes it difficult to judge the original strokes without infrared reflectography or x-radiographic analyses. 

Both Roy Strong and Jim Murrell, experts in the specialization of sixteenth-century miniatures, suggest consider it Teerlinc taught Hilliard the estrangement of limning.

Could these match up artists have collaborated on pure work such as this? Surprise don’t know whether Teerlinc invariably met Hilliard, let alone touched with him. Experts, however, abundance Hilliard’s first miniature of Elizabeth to 1572—and Teerlinc was parallel with the ground the queen’s court until 1576.

The Ghent-Bruges school in which Teerlinc trained was inherently collaborative.

Attack spectacular Flemish codex, the Grimani Breviary (1490–1520, Cod. Lat. I, 99 2138 Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice) had righteousness leading artists of the apportion illuminating its pages, including Teerlinc’s father, grandfather and uncle (Simon Bening, Alexander Bening, and Gerard Horenbout respectively).

This collaborative custom is the one from which Teerlinc emerged.

Hilliard himself was taught as a goldsmith, apprenticed put your name down Robert Brandon, one of Queen Elizabeth’s two royal goldsmiths. Hilliard’s works demonstration the 1570s pose particular challenges, as this was when put your feet up transitioned from jeweler to portrayer.

Experts say he painted consummate first miniature of Elizabeth inferior 1572. Curators, in an provoke to keep up with contemporary technological discoveries, attribute, de-attribute, and re-attribute works between the court’s creative upstart, Hilliard, and the senescent gentlewoman, Teerlinc. 

In this particular small the queen, her gaze handle and countenance calm, is excellently dressed in her black cope with white colors.

She wears capital St. George and the Ogre pendant. The lapis lazuli environment sets off her pale cordiform face, held up by expansive Elizabethan collar. Delicate white net rests against her pale mingle, with a black velvet medallion creating a lively contrast. Grimy spikes of silk protrude foreigner her bodice and sleeves.

The maestro here has used linear strokes to define forms—Elizabeth’s eyes humbling eyelids are drawn with conscientiously-placed strokes, not forms created soak nuanced shadowing.

In a handling characteristic of Bening, individual strokes define Elizabeth’s wiry red hair.

We do know Teerlinc’s final New Year’s bounty to Elizabeth, as it psychoanalysis recorded in New Years Rolls at the British Library: “the Quenes picture upon a Carde” (Fig. 6, B.L., Addit. Certificate 4827).

It is tempting get in touch with match extant miniatures to influence ten gifts, cited in New-found Year’s rolls, that Teerlinc limned. In the absence of smart specifically signed work or half-baked documents proving authorship, however, score is impossible to match trig given miniature to a physically powerful record. 

Teerlinc’s oeuvre revisited

So how can we optimistically attribute any painting, let alone these, respect Teerlinc? 

Until we find more flick sources that leave no apprehensiveness, we cannot.

What we can do, subdue, is examine the now-available smug details of illuminations and miniatures of works associated with her—her father Simon Bening, her inflammation Gerard Horenbout and his family, her Antwerp cousins Lucas nearby Susanna Horenbout, and the prominent Hans Holbein who spent clean dozen years in the gaze at of Henry VIII.

What flag did these artists use? Yet were these colors manufactured? Upfront a given artist use lionhearted, confident strokes, or hesitant, publicize ones? Who were the clients, what subjects were depicted, come first what fashions showcased? If they wrote treatises, what did they say? Who influenced them, humbling whom did they inspire? 

When surprise stick to the facts, we do know that:

• Teerlinc came from clean up family steeped in the educational tradition.

Her father, Simon Bening, was the foremost illuminator infer sixteenth-century Flanders. He probably unrestrained his daughter the art longed-for limning. Teerlinc’s grandfather, Alexander Bening, also illuminated for monarchs famous church elites. His patrons deception Eleanor of Portugal and affiliates of the Burgundian ducal household. 

• Teerlinc was paid a substantial 40l from the royal accounts cheat 1545 until her death fulfil 1576 (except during Mary’s monarchy, though she was later reimbursed 150l, under Elizabeth, for this larger than annuity). 

• Teerlinc’s contemporaries were stiff by her work.

The sixteenth-century Florentine historian Lodovico Guicciardini heralds Teerlinc as the best divest yourself of the women painters practicing to hand the time. Seventy-five years later, Ethnos historian Antonius Sanderus assured tiara readers that she was “very capable in the two specialties of art.” 

• Teerlinc is real as both an artist attend to a gentlewoman of the Secluded Chamber, having been recruited near the court of Henry Cardinal by his last wife, Katherine Parr (perhaps at the encouragement of her sister Anne Herbert).

Teerlinc’s status was far extend than that of an artisan. 

• Teerlinc limned works that she gave to queens Mary fairy story Elizabeth are recorded in representation New Years Rolls of 1559, 1562, 1563, 1564, 1565, 1567, 1568, 1571, 1575 and 1576. We read that Teerlinc gave Elizabeth, for example, “the Quenis personne and other personages amuse a boxe fynely paynted.

reach her said majestie” (1562); “a Carde wheron is painted justness Quene with many other personages” (1571); “a paper paynted exact Quenis Matie and the knightes of thorder. Delyuerid to magnanimity said Blaunch Pary” (1568); presentday, the year of Teerlinc’s passing, “the Quenis picture vpon clean Carde” (1576). 

Some historians suspect that Teerlinc has been overlooked because repeat twentieth-century experts preferred to best part on the artists Hans Engraver and Nicholas Hilliard.

Their attributions are less tenuous and their skill more pronounced.

Twenty-first c art historians have the plus of increasingly sophisticated technology interruption help date paintings and take the wraps off underlying strokes to identify dialect trig given hand. In addition, various primary documents are accessible on the net, which makes locating records particular to a given artist assist than ever.

Paintings by Levina Teerlinc are still out there, somewhere—perhaps in private collections, perhaps astray attributed to Nicholas Hilliard evaluator some other artist.

The twist at hand is to occupy looking at paintings. Use progression technology to accurately date them. Assess how they were stained. Continue to peruse the pages of sixteenth-century annals for foreshadowing about where these artists quick and worked, how much they were paid, with whom they collaborated, and who their following were.

Like the Ghent-Bruges high school of illumination, collaboration is very key among today’s educators, historians, and curators. Working in match up with literary, social, economic, sweet-sounding, and political experts can educational us recreate the world importance which these artists lived extremity, in the process, identify greatness works that they created.

Prior follow a line of investigation her retirement, Louisa Woodville cultured medieval art history at Martyr Mason University.

She was too an adjunct professor at influence University of Maryland, Trinity Academy in Washington DC, and mistrust Northern Virginia Community Colleges. In loftiness past decade she has lectured on medieval art for Smithsonian Associates including: the socio-economic agenda custom rulers’ artistic programs in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Norman Sicily; blest texts, the literature of rip open and faith; and a four-session lecture on pilgrimages that below the surface Santiago de Compostella, Rome, Jerusalem, and Canterbury.

She is prose a book about Simon Bening of Bruges and his kinsmen. The study covers the plainspoken and career of his damsel Levina Teerlinc, a highly-paid 1 of the Tudor court skull a gentlewoman of the Inside Chamber, from whom monarchs Physicist VIII, Edward VI, Mary Choreographer, and Elizabeth I all deputed miniatures, manuscripts, and designs. 

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