John Maitland, 1st Baron Maitland
© National Portrait Gallery, London
John Maitland, 1st Baron Maitland
by Unknown artist
tempera on card, circa 1588
1 1/2 in. x 1 1/8 in. (38 mm x 28 mm) oval
Given by Hugh Cobb, 1935
Primary Collection
NPG 2769
Sitterback to top
- John Maitland, 1st Baron Maitland (1543-1595), Lord High Chancellor of Scotland. Sitter in 4 portraits.
This portraitback to top
This miniature celebrates Maitland's appointment as Lord Chancellor in 1588. Unusually, it is painted in tempera on a card support. The card is composed of a number of sheets of paper stuck together and which are possibly from a sixteenth-century account book. The portraitist is unknown and the technique suggests that the artist may not have been a practised miniature painter.
Linked publicationsback to top
- Smartify image discovery app
- Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 406
- Strong, Roy, Tudor and Jacobean Portraits, 1969, p. 203
Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top
- His Picture in Little: Shakespeare, Hamlet and Tacita Dean (15 March 2018 - 28 May 2018)
Events of 1588back to top
Current affairs
The Spanish Armada sets sail for England from Lisbon but after a running battle up the Channel is met by English fire ships off Calais and destroyed. The remainder of the fleet is forced to flee. A huge thanksgiving service is held at St Paul's Cathedral to celebrate the victory.Death of Queen Elizabeth I's favourite Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
Art and science
The scientist and colonist Thomas Harriot publishes A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, in which he claims that tobacco has medicinal properties.Publication of William Morgan's Welsh translation of the Bible.
The playwright Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy is performed for the first time.
International
Henry III of France flees Paris after the militant catholic Henry, Duke of Guise is welcomed into the city. The King is forced to decree an end to all toleration of the Huguenots (French Protestants) and to annul the Protestant Henry of Navarre's right to the throne. The Duke of Guise is later assassinated on the orders of the King.Abbas I became Shah of Persia. He will rule the Persian Empire until his death in 1629.
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