Portrait of Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford, née Harrington (1612): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford, née Harrington (1612) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Isaac Oliver (French, c. 1565–1617).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Although the identity of the lady is uncertain, she must have been a wealthy woman, judging by her heavy and elaborate jewelry, complete with necklace, chain, earrings, jewel-encrusted dress and a kind of aigrette in her hair. In an age when clothes were assumed to be an accurate indicator of status, it was judged essential to wear your wealth, especially when immortalized in a portrait. Oliver painted the woman's pearl earrings using Nicholas Hilliard's jewelling technique, which involved laying a raised blob of white lead paint with some shadowing to one side. This form was then crowned with a rounded touch of real silver that was burnished with, to quote Hilliard, "a pretty little tooth of some ferret or stoat or other wild little beast." This technique brought the silver to a sparkling highlight, while actual gold is used to paint the pearl's gold setting. Silver tarnishes with age, therefore, the pearl earrings now appear black.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford, née Harrington
• Date: 1612
• Creator attribution: Isaac Oliver (French, c. 1565–1617)
• Culture: England, 17th century
• Type: Portrait Miniature
• Technique: watercolor on vellum with gold and silver in original stained ivory case
• Dimensions: Unframed: 5.3 x 4.2 cm (2 1/16 x 1 5/8 in.); Diameter of frame: 5.9 cm (2 5/16 in.)
• Collection: P - British before 1800
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1949.547

Collection credit

The Edward B. Greene Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Edward Belden Greene. Portrait Miniatures ; The Edward B. Greene Collection. 1951.
• Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Detroit Institute of Arts. The World of Shakespeare, 1564-1616: An Exhibition Organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Detroit Institute of Arts to Commemorate the Fourth Centenary of the Birth of William Shakespeare. Richmond, Va: The Museum, 1964.PR2910 .V57 1964
• Korkow, Cory, and Jon L. Seydl. British Portrait Miniatures: The Cleveland Museum of Art. 2013.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.