ABSTRACT
Isaac Oliver was a pupil of Elizabethan court miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard whose treatise Art of Limning (c. 1598-1600) is rich in indications about his contemporaries’ tastes. And yet Oliver’s direct knowledge of Italian painting is also averred. Comparing Hilliard’s manner and Oliver’s shows the important changes in visual arts which took place between 1595 and 1615. Two portrait miniatures, Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, (c. 1605-1615) and Frances Howard, Countess of Essex (c. 1606), illustrate Oliver’s use of chiaroscuro instead of Hilliard’s pure colors. Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (1608) offers opportunities to discuss another work by Oliver, The Entombment (c. 1605-1615). The parallel confirms the evolution of the notion of picturing in early modern visual arts.
