... and smaller still.(Current and coming)(Cincinnati Art Museum's exhibition)

The most intimate of art forms, the portrait miniature, has experienced a renaissance of scholarly and collector interest in recent years. Small enough to be worn or held in the palm of one's hand, these works of art are prized for the accuracy of the likenesses, which often are painted in painstaking detail. Miniatures can be found in ornate frames of gold, sometimes decorated with seed pearls or even gemstones, and sometimes backed with intricate framed designs worked in human hair.

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The Cincinnati Art Museum is the fortunate owner of more than fifteen hundred miniatures created in Europe, England, and the United States from the late sixteenth to the early twentieth century. Nearly 180 of them have been selected for an exhibition at the museum from March 4 to May 28. It then travels to the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina, where it may be seen from August 18 to October 22. Perfect Likeness: European and American Portrait Miniatures from the Cincinnati Art Museum also incorporates larger-scale paintings, costumes, works on paper, jewelry, decorative art objects, children's toys, and artists' manuals. These objects help to provide contexts for the times in which the miniatures were painted as well as the way in which they were used and appreciated by their owners.

Miniatures were most often painted on ivory, but copper, vellum, and paper were also used. An offshoot is the plumbago portrait drawn in a soft black lead or ink. They are slightly larger than miniatures, but still less than six inches high. They were first devised in the Netherlands, but the vogue for them spread to England, primarily through Dutch ...