Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist > Status Update

‘While Hilliard’s artistic range increased following his return from France, his financial position remained precarious and ill-managed, marked by litigation, disputes and a pattern of unattractive conduct. His investment, probably around 1573-4, in a Scottish gold-mining scheme had failed and Hilliard, as discussed in Chapter 4, had lost all he had put into it.’

‘On 25 September 1576, Hilliard - then about twenty-nine years old and recently married - set sail for France in the train of Sir Amias Paulet, the queen’s newly appointed ambassador to the Valois court... More than two years passed before Hilliard’s return to England, probably in November 1578. Hilliard’s bride, Alice, spent some bur not all of this time with her husband, conceiving their first child in France’

‘This much is clear, however: by late 1570 or early 1571, Hilliard - who may have crossed paths with Leicester while apprenticed to Brandon - now counted the earl as a patron in his own right. In this, Hilliard’s miniatures were, by the summer of 1571, attracting the attention not only of Queen Elizabeth but also of Catherine de’ Medici, probably the greatest Continental patron and collector of the day.’

‘Thus, the young Hilliard - whatever his formal education may have been during his years in Geneva - was surrounded, in Knox’s English congregation and Calvin’s Geneva, by many of the leading Protestant thinkers and writers of the day. Moreover, as John Bodley’s surrogate son, he had a front-row seat for arguably the greatest Protestant publishing venture of the sixteenth century’

‘Had Nicholas Hilliard been born a decade or so earlier - or, indeed, a decade or so later - he might have spent his entire childhood and youth living in Exeter. But the religious upheavals of the mid-sixteenth century disrupted that course for Hilliard, as for many others of his generation. The Reformation saw unprecedented flows of refugees across the English Channel, in both directions.’

‘Part of the enduring appeal no doubt lies in the fact that Hilliard’s sitters included many of the leading members of the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts, not least Elizabeth and James themselves. Others who sat to him include Mary Queen of Scots; the explorers Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Ralegh; Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex’