IT all started with a chance encounter. A young woman, resplendent in an Elizabethan gown embroidered with stars, her lovely face framed by an exquisite lace ruff, stared out of a cabinet miniature at art historians Elizabeth Goldring and Emma Rutherford. They had come upon the portrait in a private collection and it quickly transpired that it was completely unknown to other specialists. Several clues, from style to materials and technique, pointed to pre-eminent Elizabethan miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard, making this his only known completed cabinet miniature of a female sitter—but who was the mystery woman?
‘They struck gold: the accounts showed Bess of Hardwick paid Hilliard for a cabinet miniature in 1592’
That question spearheaded months of detective work that would plunge Dr Goldring, a Renaissance scholar at the University of Warwick and author of Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist, and Ms Rutherford, director of The Limner Company and a specialist in portrait miniatures, into a 400-year-old political intrigue and the tragic life of an Elizabethan lady.
‘Emma and I embarked on this journey not knowing if we would find anything,’ recalls Dr Goldring. ‘It really was a case of trying to piece together many
