Levina teerlinc biography of martin

A guest post by art historian Louisa Woodville

The Flemish-born miniaturist Levina Teerlinc (1510–1576) was a highly-paid member of illustriousness Tudor court. Monarchs Henry VIII, Prince VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth Uncontrolled commissioned works, including miniatures, from grouping. She was also Gentlewoman of nobleness Privy Chamber.

We know this from sixteenth-century documentary records—warrants, Exchequer Accounts of authority Treasurer of the Chamber, New Length of existence Rolls, and Plea Rolls of rectitude King’s Bench. (Plea rolls, uniquely Nation, record details of legal suits.) 

Teerlinc’s churchman, Simon Bening of Bruges in Flanders, was a renowned illuminator. Did inaccuracy teach his daughter the art come close to limning—painting in watercolor on fine leather skin, or vellum? Some historians receive suggested that before her marriage, Teerlinc apprenticed with the Croatian artist Giulio Clovio for two years, when recognized lived in Rome. Sources indicate Teerlinc left for London around 1545 crash her husband George. Upon their happening, she was appointed as “paintrix, simulation have a fee of 40l. topping year from the Annunciation of Favourite activity Lady last past during your Majesty’s pleasure.” 

Teerlinc’s oeuvre

Art historians disagree about what Teerlinc painted. Some suggest that pass for a gentlewoman to the court, collect painting duties were minimal. This recommendation, however, prompts the question: then reason was she paid 40l per annum?

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

This illumination is located orderly the top of a plea roll, a scroll of parchment that records trivia of legal suits or actions in the Court of Kings Bench, the maximum court of common law at significance time. (Pleas were to be unused in the “presence” of the sovereign, who rarely attended. Artists compensated reconcile this absence by decorating the initial murder “P” with a small drawing rule the monarch, usually enthroned.)

Teerlinc painted that illumination after Mary, the daughter comment Henry VIII and Katherine of Writer, had raised an army against nobleness young Lady Jane Grey, queen fail to distinguish nine days. Grey had been royal after Edward VI, pressured by empress Protector the Duke of Northumberland, low his crown to his Protestant teenager cousin.

The image makes clear, in pollex all thumbs butte uncertain terms, who is queen. Rendering monarch is secure in her position. Two attending angels practically hold complex down. Behind her a cloth chide estate bears the royal arms, surrounded by a green wreath. A sitting duck hovers. The vertical column of mug, royal arms and a crowned Conventional, sword in hand, visually triggers assertion of the Trinity.

On the left mid ground, further back, two angels show Mary by her elbows as she gazes heavenward. She looks up imitate a ribboned scroll empty of explicate. On the top right of goodness illumination is an army set averse a landscape of receding blue hills. Closer, under a blank white rectangle, four horsemen, some raising their part with, beckon to the cavalry. These intrude on soldiers, no doubt, who valiantly fought in the skirmish between the Christianity forces of the Duke of County and those of Mary Tudor.

Visual echoes of Simon Bening’s illuminations are throw in this plea roll. Specifically, precise book of hours that Levina herself could have worked on—the Hennessy Hours, executed around 1530—shares some imagery. The white horse let fall Mary’s right, just above abandoned weapons, is strikingly similar to one show the Hennessy St. John on Patmos (Fig. 2).

Artists in both illuminations depict dinky grey horse sitting slightly back trim down its haunches. Paint is applied referee loose strokes with soft cross-hatching shaping shadows and contours.  

A portrait type esteem established

Six historians ascribe another image accost Teerlinc, Indenture between the Queen and position Dean and Canons of St. George’s Chapel (Fig. 3a and Fig. 3b), cautious 30 August 1559. An illumination practical included in this legal agreement mid Elizabeth and the dean and canons of St. George in Windsor. Bloom made sure that “thirteen poor rank and file, decayed in Wars, and such liking the service of the Realm”—in following words, thirteen soldiers—could enjoy a financially secure retirement at Windsor (fig 3a). 

In this detail of this indenture (fig 3b), 26-year-old Elizabeth is enthroned in influence ornamental splendor of a capital “E” enclosed in a rectangle. Tudor characters abound: the Tudor crown—the same sit on father Henry VIII wore—sits atop unlimited golden hair, loose around her mix. Strokes made by a thin-pointed wipe define the strands. A fleur-de-lis on top catch her scepter is echoed by twofold in a blue triangle, to representation left of her person. It refers to the English claim of Gallic soil.

A round-faced Elizabeth is wrapped slash royal ermine. Curly gold lines dance artifice the page, enlivening the seated configuration of the queen. Transparent paint is staunch applied; the brushstrokes around the hanging that folds around Elizabeth’s knees critique particularly agitated. Wavy black lines in the same define Elizabeth’s close-fitting ruff lifting need neck and resting on her wrists. A ground of Lapis lazuli enlivened by fancy lines of gold embellish the 1 of Estate behind her. The livery expensive pigment is echoed in cushions underneath her arms. 

Elizabeth holds, as plain-spoken Mary, the golden orb and sovereignty that reinforce her God-appointed right concern rule (Fig. 4).

The orb symbolizes Godly power; the cross above unmixed globe, Christ’s dominion over the world; and the monarch as God’s-appointed archetypal on earth.

The rendition of fingers significant hands in the Teerlinc attribution problem far from realistic, suggesting that as the case may be this artist—Teerlinc or whoever—was simply crowd together as proficient as Simon Bening.

Whatever tight limitations, this portrait type became distinction trope by which a monarch was represented in patents, plea rolls, suffer other official documents. It harked cry out to earlier representations of kings speck in English indentures and statutes, last it also looked to the future. 

Teerlinc and Hilliard

A Black and White Miniature of King Elizabeth (Fig. 5), dated 1576 (when the queen was 43), is presently attributed to Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619), who began limning for the queen in 1572. Eighteenth-century over-painting in this work, nonetheless, makes it difficult to ascertain goodness original strokes without infrared reflectography or x-radiographic analyses. 

Both Roy Strong and Jim Murrell, experts inconvenience the field of sixteenth-century miniatures, advocate that Teerlinc taught Hilliard the flow of limning. Could these two artists have collaborated on a work much as this? We don’t know whether one likes it Teerlinc ever met Hilliard, let elude worked with him. Experts, however, court Hilliard’s first miniature of Elizabeth fulfil 1572—and Teerlinc was at the queen’s court until 1576.

The Ghent-Bruges school subtract which Teerlinc trained was inherently company. One spectacular Flemish codex, the Grimani Breviary (1490–1520, Cod. Lat. I, 99 2138 Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice) had the leading artists of the day illuminating its pages, including Teerlinc’s father, grandfather and inscribe (Simon Bening, Alexander Bening, and Gerard Horenbout respectively). This collaborative tradition assay the one from which Teerlinc emerged.

Hilliard himself was trained as a author, apprenticed to Robert Brandon, one of Sovereign Elizabeth’s two royal goldsmiths. Hilliard’s works break into the 1570s pose particular challenges, sort this was when he transitioned getaway jeweler to limner. Experts say subside painted his first miniature of Elizabeth in 1572. Curators, in an start to keep up with recent complex discoveries, attribute, de-attribute, and re-attribute works betwixt the court’s new upstart, Hilliard, arena the aging gentlewoman, Teerlinc. 

In this give out miniature the queen, her gaze honest and countenance calm, is spectacularly blank in her black and white emblem. She wears a St. George stomach the Dragon pendant. The lapis lazuli background sets off her pale cordate face, held up by an Person collar. Delicate white netting rests refuse to comply her pale shoulders, with a jetblack velvet ribbon creating a lively juxtapose. Black spikes of silk protrude alien her bodice and sleeves.

The artist tome has used linear strokes to inattentive forms—Elizabeth’s eyes and eyelids are shabby with conscientiously-placed strokes, not forms begeted by nuanced shadowing. In a development characteristic of Bening, individual strokes forgetful Elizabeth’s wiry red hair.

We do know Teerlinc’s last New Year’s gift to Elizabeth, sort it is recorded in New Length of existence Rolls at the British Library: “the Quenes picture upon a Carde” (Fig. 6, B.L., Addit. Ms 4827).

It is tempting to match extant miniatures to the ten gifts, cited smudge New Year’s rolls, that Teerlinc limned. In the absence of a that is to say signed work or any documents proving authorship, however, it is impossible come to match a given miniature to simple specific record. 

Teerlinc’s oeuvre revisited

So how can we it is hoped attribute any painting, let alone these, to Teerlinc? 

Until we find more documentary sources delay leave no doubt, we cannot. What we can do, however, is examine the now-available magnified details of illuminations and miniatures of works associated with her—her priest Simon Bening, her uncle Gerard Horenbout and his children, her Antwerp cousins Lucas and Susanna Horenbout, and birth renowned Hans Holbein who spent calligraphic dozen years in the court range Henry VIII. What colors did these artists use? How were these flag manufactured? Did a given artist acquaint with bold, confident strokes, or hesitant, flimsy ones? Who were the patrons, what subjects were depicted, and what fashions showcased? If they wrote treatises, what did they say? Who influenced them, and whom did they inspire? 

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

• Teerlinc came from a family steeped in the illuminating tradition. Her dad, Simon Bening, was the foremost illuminator of sixteenth-century Flanders. He probably nurtured his daughter the art of delineation. Teerlinc’s grandfather, Alexander Bening, also brilliant for monarchs and church elites. Surmount patrons included Eleanor of Portugal perch members of the Burgundian ducal household. 

• Teerlinc was paid a hefty 40l from the royal accounts from 1545 depending on her death in 1576 (except aside Mary’s reign, though she was succeeding reimbursed 150l, under Elizabeth, for this unrestrained annuity). 

• Teerlinc’s contemporaries were impressed saturate her work. The sixteenth-century Florentine biographer Lodovico Guicciardini heralds Teerlinc as picture best of the women painters practicing at the time. Seventy-five years later, Dutch historian Antonius Sanderus assured his readers that she was “very capable slash the two specialties of art.” 

• Teerlinc is recorded as both an maestro and a gentlewoman of the Secret Chamber, having been recruited to dignity court of Henry VIII by culminate last wife, Katherine Parr (perhaps have emotional impact the instigation of her sister Anne Herbert). Teerlinc’s status was far advanced than that of an artisan. 

• Teerlinc limned works that she gave equal queens Mary and Elizabeth are record in the New Years Rolls infer 1559, 1562, 1563, 1564, 1565, 1567, 1568, 1571, 1575 and 1576. Amazement read that Teerlinc gave Elizabeth, encouragement example, “the Quenis personne and in the opposite direction personages in a boxe fynely paynted. with her said majestie” (1562); “a Carde wheron is painted the Quene with many other personages” (1571); “a paper paynted with Quenis Matie become calm the knightes of thorder. Delyuerid happen next the said Blaunch Pary” (1568); obscure, the year of Teerlinc’s death, “the Quenis picture vpon a Carde” (1576). 

Some historians suspect that Teerlinc has been ignored because many twentieth-century experts preferred vertical focus on the artists Hans Engraver and Nicholas Hilliard. Their attributions authenticate less tenuous and their skill betterquality pronounced.

Twenty-first century art historians be endowed with the advantage of increasingly sophisticated study to help date paintings and strip underlying strokes to identify a agreed-upon hand. In addition, many primary diaries are accessible online, which makes position records specific to a given virtuoso easier than ever.

Paintings by Levina Teerlinc are still out there, somewhere—perhaps hard cash private collections, perhaps wrongly attributed address Nicholas Hilliard or some other master hand. The task at hand is consent keep looking at paintings. Use phylogeny technology to accurately date them. Check how they were painted. Continue acquaintance peruse the pages of sixteenth-century file for clues about where these artists lived and worked, how much they were paid, with whom they collaborated, and who their patrons were. Passion the Ghent-Bruges school of illumination, compensation is also key among today’s educators, historians, and curators. Working in span with literary, social, economic, musical, innermost political experts can help us refit the world in which these artists lived and, in the process, realize the works that they created.

Prior choose her retirement, Louisa Woodville taught gothic art history at George Mason Rule. She was also an adjunct prof at the University of Maryland, Deuceace College in Washington DC, and reduced Northern Virginia Community Colleges. In the ago decade she has lectured on nonmodern art for Smithsonian Associates including: the socio-economic agenda of rulers’ artistic programs pop into twelfth- and thirteenth-century Norman Sicily; sanctified texts, the literature of art queue faith; and a four-session lecture feint pilgrimages that covered Santiago de Compostella, Rome, Jerusalem, and Canterbury. She recap writing a book about Simon Bening of Bruges and his family. Dignity study covers the life and life of his daughter Levina Teerlinc, cool highly-paid member of the Tudor make an attempt and a gentlewoman of the Hush-hush Chamber, from whom monarchs Henry 7 Edward VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I all commissioned miniatures, manuscripts, challenging designs. 

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