Levina Teerlinc

Self-portrait by and of Simon Bening, Levina Teerlinc's father

Teerlinc was born in Bruges, Flanders (which is now a part of Belgium) in the 1510s, one of five daughters of renowned miniaturist Simon Bening and granddaughter of Catherine van der Goes (closely related to Hugo van der Goes) and Alexander Bening.[3][4] After marrying George Teerlinc of Blanckenberge in 1545, Teerlinc left for England, and is documented there by 1546, when she became court painter to the Tudor court, serving Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. She received an annual salary of £40 from 1546 until her death in 1576, as granted by Henry VIII[5] and recorded by Lodovico Guicciardini (1567),[5] which was more than was provided to Holbein.[6] She was the only female painter in the court of Henry VIII,[7] although Catherine Parr was said to have employed three women miniature painters and these were Susannah Hornebolt, Levina Teerlinc and Margaret Holsewyther.[8]

Queen Mary gave her a New Year's day gift of a gilt silver salt in 1556 and she gave the queen a small picture of the Trinity.[9] In 1559 Teerlinc was appointed tutor in painting to the King's daughter at the Spanish Court.[10] She and her husband had one son, Marcus.[7] She died in Stepney, London on 23 June 1576.[11]

Art historian Louisa Woodville writes:[12]

Teerlinc’s contemporaries were impressed by her work. The sixteenth-century Florentine historian Lodovico Guicciardini heralds Teerlinc as the best of the women painters practicing at the time. Seventy-five years later, Flemish historian Antonius Sanderus assured his readers that she was “very capable in the two specialties of art.”

Portrait of Elizabeth I attributed to Levina Teerlinc, c. 1560–5. The Royal Collection.[13] The likeness the sitter bears to those in miniatures of Katherine Grey, Countess of Hertford, has led to many suggestions that Lady Katherine Grey may be the sitter instead

No surviving works have been confirmed as Teerlinc's.[14] Yet she was one of the most well-documented artists at court in miniature painting, providing various portraits of Elizabeth I in the years 1559, 1562, 1563, 1564, 1567 ("a full-length portrait"), 1568 ("with Knights of the Order"), 1575 ("with other personages"), and 1576.[4] She also painted for Mary I in 1556 as a New Year gift "a small picture of the trynitie".[5] Teerlinc is best known for her pivotal position in the rise of the portrait miniature. She might have trained Nicholas Hilliard, by training a goldsmith, in the methods of miniature portraiture.[15]

Attributing Teerlinc's works is challenging because she did not always sign them. However, there are a few existing paintings that are suspected to be Teerlinc's due to the fact she was the only active miniaturist of prominence in English court between Hans Holbein the Younger in 1543 and Nicholas Hilliard in the 1570s.[16] Some scholars also speculate that many of the miniatures were lost in the fire at Whitehall.[17]

Katherine Grey, Countess of Hertford with her eldest son Edward Seymour, Lord Beauchamp, by Levina Teerlinc. Late 1562 or early 1563.[18] Private Collection

A 1983 exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum represented "the first occasion when a group of miniatures has been assembled which can be attributed to Levina Teerlinc".[6] Since the exhibition also performed the same function for her predecessor as court miniaturist, Lucas Hornebolte, it was especially useful in developing consensus on attributions. Five miniatures and two illuminated manuscript sheets were in the group, including a miniature of Lady Katherine Grey from the V&A, and others from the Yale Center for British Art, the Royal Collection (both of these possibly of the young Elizabeth I, and private collections). Strong considered there was "a convincing group of miniatures that emerge as the work of a single hand, one whose draughtsmanship is weak, whose paint is thin and transparent and whose brushwork loose".[6] She also probably designed the Great Seal of England for Mary I and the earliest one used by Elizabeth (in the 1540s).[10]

Possible portrait miniature of Amy Robsart on the occasion of her wedding, 1550,[note 1] by Levina Teerlinc. In the Yale Center for British Art

• 
  Katherine Grey, Countess of Hertford by Levina Teerlinc, c. 1555-1560.[19] The Victoria and Albert Museum, P.10&A-1979
• 
  Portrait of Elizabeth I attributed to Levina Teerlinc, c. 1565. The Royal Collection
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  Mary Dudley, Lady Sidney by Levina Teerlinc, c. 1575.[21] The Victoria and Albert Museum, E.1170-1988
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  Edward VI by Levina Teerlinc.[22] After William Scrots's portrait of the young King of c. 1550
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  Amy Robsart – The Beaufort Miniature by Levina Teerlinc, c. 1559.[note 2] Private Collection
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  Katherine Grey, Countess of Hertford by Levina Teerlinc. The Victoria and Albert Museum, P.21-1954. Heavily overpainted. The date of '1549' is a later addition and the costume is typical of Mary’s reign which would accord with the age of the sitter, about fifteen to twenty, circa 1555-60[18]
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  Elizabeth I when a Princess by Levina Teerlinc, c. 1551. The Paine Miniature. In October 1551 Levina Teerlinc was sent with her husband to the Princess Elizabeth 'to drawe out her picture'
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  Mary Neville, Lady Dacre by Levina Teerlinc
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  Portrait of a man, possibly Sir George Carew. Bought in 1970 together with the Yale Miniature from the collection of Miss Dorothy Hutton. At the time it was thought to have been painted by the same hand as the Yale Miniature
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  The Coronation Miniature – Portrait of Elizabeth I in State Robes. Welbeck Abbey Collection, formerly in the collection of the Duke of Portland.
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  Portrait of Elizabeth I of England in her coronation robes. Copy c. 1600–1610 of a lost original of c. 1559[24]
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  Levina Teerlinc, Mary I with Figures in Landscape, Court of King's Bench, Coram Rege Rolls. Michaelmas, 1553[25]
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  Levina Teerlinc, Indenture between the Queen, Elizabeth I, and the Dean and Canons of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, 30 August 1559[26]
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  Elizabeth I, Court of King's Bench, Coram Rege Roll. Easter Term, 1572
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  Mary I "healing" scrofula by touch. A 16th-century illustration by the Queen's miniaturist Levina Teerlinc from Queen Mary's manual for blessing cramp rings and touching for Evil. Before 1558[27][28]
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  Henry VIII. A recent technical analysis has shown that this miniature was painted by the same hand as the Yale Miniature[29]
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  Katherine Parr by Levina Teerlinc. The Sudeley Miniature
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  Katherine Brydges, Lady Dudley by Levina Teerlinc, c. 1560. A courtier to both Mary I and Elizabeth I. The daughter of John Brydges, 1st Baron Chandos and the wife of Edward Sutton, 4th Baron Dudley[30]
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  Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford and 1st Duke of Somerset, 1550s[31]
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  Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, c. 1545–1547
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  An Elizabethan Maundy, miniature by Levina Teerlinc, c. 1560[27][32]
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  Elizabeth I, c. 1559. Has the spindly arms identified by Strong[27]
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  Queen Elizabeth I of England receives Dutch ambassadors, attributed to Levina Teerlinc, c. 1560

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Levina Teerlinc.

• Arnold, Janet: "The 'Coronation' Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I", The Burlington Magazine, CXX, 1978, pp. 727–41.
• Chadwick, Whitney (1990). Women, Art, and Society. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 9780500202418.
• Harris, Anne Sutherland and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Knopf, New York, 1976.
• Strong, Roy: "From Manuscript to Miniature" in John Murdoch, Jim Murrell, Patrick J. Noon & Roy Strong, The English Miniature, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1981 (Strong 1981)
• Strong, Roy: Artists of the Tudor Court: The Portrait Miniature Rediscovered, 1520-1620, Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition catalogue, 1983, ISBN 0-905209-34-6 (Strong 1983)