Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Portrait of a Nobleman
William Gibson (English, 1644–1703)
1675/1700
- Medium
- Watercolor heightened with gum arabic on paper
- Classification
- Miniature Painting
- Dimensions
- 7.5 × 5.9 cm (2 15/16 × 2 5/16 in.); Framed: 9.5 × 6.4 cm (3 3/4 × 2 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- England
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Colonel Alexander F. and Jeannie C. Stevenson Memorial Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Portrait miniatures like this one were popular as gifts and keepsakes in 17th-century England. They were mounted under glass in fine metal frames or lockets to be worn close to the body or held in the hand as visual vessels of memory. The dress and hairstyle of this subject were fashionable over 30 to 40 years before the work was painted, indicating that it may be a posthumous copy of an earlier portrait of a beloved family member or an admired person.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
