ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on hitherto neglected examples of British portraiture from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in order to explore how much such images reflect, or indeed help to construct, the world of the child. It also focuses on a few case studies which between them cover the period 1538 to c.1630, a period of remarkable growth in the commission of portraits in which the genre of family and child portraits formed a distinct group. The chapter looks at neglected early British material, in an attempt to nuance the traditional view and to suggest paths for future research. Early portraiture has been hampered by fact that the identities of many artists and the sitters has been lost, rendering contextual research difficult. Like conduct literature, portraiture focused on becoming as much as being, and on the skills that children needed to acquire.
