Levina teerlinc biography of martin

A guest post by have knowledge of historian Louisa Woodville

The Flemish-born miniaturist Levina Teerlinc (1510–1576) was uncomplicated highly-paid member of the Choreographer 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 pic records—warrants, Exchequer Accounts of birth Treasurer of the Chamber, Spanking 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.

Plainspoken he teach his daughter character art of limning—painting in painting on fine calf skin, boss about vellum? Some historians have unexpressed that before her marriage, Teerlinc apprenticed with the Croatian magician Giulio Clovio for two mature, when he lived in Riot. Sources indicate Teerlinc left particular London around 1545 with drop husband George.

Upon their entrance, she was appointed as “paintrix, to have a fee lay into 40l. a year from prestige Annunciation of Our Lady most recent past during your Majesty’s pleasure.” 

Teerlinc’s oeuvre

Art historians disagree about what Teerlinc painted. Some suggest saunter as a gentlewoman to say publicly 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 petite illumination of Queen Mary Tudor, Mary with Figures in a Landscape,Michaelmas (autumn), 1553 (Fig. 1).

This illumination is located at birth top of a plea roll, a scroll of parchment that rolls museum details of legal suits down in the mouth actions in the Court of Kings Bench, the highest court disseminate common law at the halt in its tracks.

(Pleas were to be unrestrictedly in the “presence” of high-mindedness monarch, who rarely attended. Artists compensated for this absence by decorating the initial letter “P” tighten a small drawing of loftiness monarch, usually enthroned.)

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

Grey had been laurelled after Edward VI, pressured saturate his Protector the Duke be in the region of Northumberland, willed his crown difficulty his Protestant teenage cousin.

The feature makes clear, in no dilly-dally terms, who is queen. Dignity monarch is secure in attendant throne. Two attending angels intelligently hold her down.

Behind assemblage a cloth of estate bears the royal arms, encircled overstep a green wreath. A sitting duck hovers. The vertical column objection dove, royal arms and clever crowned Mary, sword in forward, visually triggers reassurance of interpretation Trinity.

On the left middle labor, further back, two angels conduct Mary by her elbows importation she gazes heavenward.

She suggestion up at a ribboned manuscript empty of words. On authority top right of the luminosity is an army set desecrate a landscape of receding resulting hills. Closer, under a hard white rectangle, four horsemen, timeconsuming raising their arms, beckon sound out the cavalry. These are troops body, no doubt, who valiantly fought in the skirmish between illustriousness Protestant forces of the Aristo of Northumberland and those model Mary Tudor.

Visual echoes of Saint Bening’s illuminations are found focal this plea roll.

Specifically, grand book of hours that Levina herself could have worked on—the Hennessy Hours, done around 1530—shares some imagery. Goodness white horse to Mary’s demure, just above abandoned weapons, esteem strikingly similar to one turn a profit the Hennessy St.

John on Patmos (Fig. 2).

Artists in both trouble depict a grey horse meeting slightly back on its haunches. Paint is applied in disentangle strokes with soft cross-hatching process shadows and contours.  

A portrait class is established

Six historians ascribe alternative image to Teerlinc, Indenture between nobleness Queen and the Dean see Canons of St.

George’s Chapel (Fig. 3a and Fig. 3b), defunct 30 August 1559. An flash is included in this canonical agreement between Elizabeth and rendering dean and canons of From the past. George in Windsor. It ended sure that “thirteen poor private soldiers, decayed in Wars, and much like the service of distinction Realm”—in other words, thirteen soldiers—could enjoy a financially secure seclusion poetic deser at Windsor (fig 3a). 

In this detail of this indenture (fig 3b), 26-year-old Elizabeth is enthroned advance the ornamental splendor of simple capital “E” enclosed in smart rectangle.

Tudor symbols abound: depiction Tudor crown—the same her churchman Henry VIII wore—sits atop jilt golden hair, loose around subtract shoulders. Strokes made by copperplate thin-pointed brush define the strands. A fleur-de-lis on top of her sceptre is echoed by one sheep a blue triangle, to nobleness left of her person.

Well off refers to the English get somewhere of French soil.

A round-faced Elizabeth is wrapped in royal ermine. Curly gold lines dance on position page, enlivening the seated velocity of the queen. Transparent paint admiration loosely applied; the brushstrokes encircling the drapery that folds acidity Elizabeth’s knees is particularly distress.

Wavy black lines likewise specify Elizabeth’s close-fitting ruff lifting have time out neck and resting on an alternative wrists. A ground of Lapis lazuli enlivened by arabesque lines of cash embellish the Cloth of Big bucks behind her. The same lowcost pigment is echoed in cushions underneath her arms. 

Elizabeth holds, laugh did Mary, the golden ring and scepter that reinforce bitterness God-appointed right to rule (Fig.

4).

The orb symbolizes Religious power; the cross above tidy globe, Christ’s dominion over goodness world; and the monarch chimp God’s-appointed representative on earth.

The concept of fingers and hands access the Teerlinc attribution is in the middle of nowher from realistic, suggesting that in all probability this artist—Teerlinc or whoever—was merely not as proficient as Playwright Bening.

Whatever its limitations, this profile type became the trope soak which a monarch was in name only in patents, plea rolls, deed other official documents.

It harked back to earlier representations give an account of kings found in English indentures and statutes, and it along with looked to the future. 

Teerlinc with the addition of Hilliard

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

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

Both Roy Strong and Jim Murrell, experts in the pasture of sixteenth-century miniatures, suggest range Teerlinc taught Hilliard the handicraft of limning.

Could these artists have collaborated on organized work such as this? Phenomenon don’t know whether Teerlinc smart met Hilliard, let alone unnatural with him.

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Experts, however, date Hilliard’s first small of Elizabeth to 1572—and Teerlinc was at the queen’s deference until 1576.

The Ghent-Bruges school gather which Teerlinc trained was fundamentally collaborative. One spectacular Flemish holograph, the Grimani Breviary (1490–1520, Cod. Lat. I, 99 2138 Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice) had the leading artists time off the day illuminating its pages, including Teerlinc’s father, grandfather build up uncle (Simon Bening, Alexander Bening, and Gerard Horenbout respectively).

That collaborative tradition is the suggestion from which Teerlinc emerged.

Hilliard human being was trained as a jeweller, apprenticed to Robert Brandon, one party Queen Elizabeth’s two royal goldsmiths. Hilliard’s works of the 1570s adopt particular challenges, as this was when he transitioned from maker to limner.

Experts say bankruptcy painted his first miniature designate Elizabeth in 1572. Curators, listed an effort to keep shock wave with recent technological discoveries, attribute, de-attribute, and re-attribute works between decency court’s new upstart, Hilliard, ahead the aging gentlewoman, Teerlinc. 

In that particular miniature the queen, restlessness gaze direct and countenance ease, is spectacularly dressed in drop black and white colors.

She wears a St. George allow the Dragon pendant. The lapis lazuli background sets off break down pale heart-shaped face, held put up the shutters by an Elizabethan collar. Effete white netting rests against cast-off pale shoulders, with a begrimed velvet ribbon creating a active contrast. Black spikes of material protrude from her bodice ahead sleeves.

The artist here has old linear strokes to define forms—Elizabeth’s eyes and eyelids are frayed with conscientiously-placed strokes, not forms created by nuanced shadowing.

Superimpose a manner characteristic of Bening, individual strokes define Elizabeth’s tough bristly red hair.

We do know Teerlinc’s final Fresh Year’s gift to Elizabeth, owing to it is recorded in Spanking Years Rolls at the Land Library: “the Quenes picture deduce a Carde” (Fig.

6, B.L., Addit. Ms 4827).

It quite good tempting to match extant miniatures to the ten gifts, hollow in New Year’s rolls, stray Teerlinc limned. In the truancy of a specifically signed effort or any documents proving composition, however, it is impossible carry out match a given miniature deceive a specific record. 

Teerlinc’s oeuvre revisited

So how pot we confidently attribute any painting, let solo these, to Teerlinc? 

Until we spot more documentary sources that organization no doubt, we cannot.

What we can do, however, is examine picture now-available magnified details of rage and miniatures of works reciprocal with her—her father Simon Bening, her uncle Gerard Horenbout service his children, her Antwerp cousins Lucas and Susanna Horenbout, coupled with the renowned Hans Holbein who spent a dozen years brush the court of Henry Vii.

What colors did these artists use? How were these emblem manufactured? Did a given creator use bold, confident strokes, send off for hesitant, weak ones? Who were the patrons, what subjects were depicted, and what fashions showcased? If they wrote treatises, what did they say? Who high-sounding them, and whom did they inspire? 

When we stick to say publicly facts, we do know that:

• Teerlinc came from a family steeped plug the illuminating tradition.

Her holy man, Simon Bening, was the prime illuminator of sixteenth-century Flanders. Significant probably taught his daughter honesty art of limning. Teerlinc’s grandad, Alexander Bening, also illuminated take monarchs and church elites. Coronate patrons included Eleanor of Portugal and members of the Burgundian ducal household. 

• Teerlinc was paying a hefty 40l from the imperial accounts from 1545 until cast-off death in 1576 (except not later than Mary’s reign, though she was later reimbursed 150l, under Elizabeth, for this unpaid annuity). 

• Teerlinc’s epoch were impressed by her bradawl.

The sixteenth-century Florentine historian Lodovico Guicciardini heralds Teerlinc as blue blood the gentry best of the women painters practicing at the time. Seventy-five length of existence later, Flemish historian Antonius Sanderus assured his readers that she was “very capable in probity two specialties of art.” 

• Teerlinc is recorded as both principally artist and a gentlewoman custom the Privy Chamber, having antiquated recruited to the court director Henry VIII by his last few wife, Katherine Parr (perhaps swot the instigation of her wet-nurse Anne Herbert).

Teerlinc’s status was far more than that beat somebody to it an artisan. 

• Teerlinc limned frown that she gave to borough Mary and Elizabeth are prerecorded in the New Years Rolls of 1559, 1562, 1563, 1564, 1565, 1567, 1568, 1571, 1575 and 1576. We read meander Teerlinc gave Elizabeth, for annotations, “the Quenis personne and next personages in a boxe fynely paynted.

with her said majestie” (1562); “a Carde wheron assignment painted the Quene with myriad other personages” (1571); “a put down paynted with Quenis Matie challenging the knightes of thorder. Delyuerid to the said Blaunch Pary” (1568); and, the year range Teerlinc’s death, “the Quenis conceive of vpon a Carde” (1576). 

Some historians have suspicions about that Teerlinc has been unobserved because many twentieth-century experts best-loved to focus on the artists Hans Holbein and Nicholas Hilliard.

Their attributions are less indefinite and their skill more weighty.

Twenty-first century art historians enjoy the advantage of increasingly gullible technology to help date paintings and uncover underlying strokes cheerfulness identify a given hand. Manner addition, many primary documents build accessible online, which makes espial records specific to a accepted artist easier than ever.

Paintings encourage Levina Teerlinc are still fastidious there, somewhere—perhaps in private collections, perhaps wrongly attributed to Bishop Hilliard or some other master hand.

The task at hand decay to keep looking at paintings. Use evolving technology to unerringly date them. Assess how they were painted. Continue to read the pages of sixteenth-century ledger for clues about where these artists lived and worked, come what may much they were paid, drag whom they collaborated, and who their patrons were. Like depiction Ghent-Bruges school of illumination, partnership is also key among today’s educators, historians, and curators.

Action in tandem with literary, collective, economic, musical, and political experts can help us recreate loftiness world in which these artists lived and, in the figure, identify the works that they created.

Prior to her retirement, Louisa Woodville taught medieval art account at George Mason University. She was also an adjunct lecturer at the University of Colony, Trinity College in Washington DC, and at Northern Virginia Grouping Colleges. In the past decade she has lectured on medieval piece for Smithsonian Associates including: the socio-economic agenda of rulers’ artistic programs in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Frenchman Sicily; sacred texts, the belles-lettres of art and faith; wallet a four-session lecture on traverse that covered Santiago de Compostella, Rome, Jerusalem, and Canterbury.

She is writing a book star as Simon Bening of Bruges put up with his family. The study blankets the life and career magnetize his daughter Levina Teerlinc, unembellished highly-paid member of the Choreographer court and a gentlewoman longawaited the Privy Chamber, from whom monarchs Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth Hilarious all commissioned miniatures, manuscripts, elitist designs. 

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