Footnotes

• R.C. Bald notes in his study of Donne that the earliest surviving portrait, depicting Donne at the age of eighteen, is known only from this engraving, of which this is an early example. The original was clearly a miniature, and so authoritative an expert as Laurence Binyon has ventured the opinion that it was in all probability painted by Nicholas Hilliard. From an early age Donne possessed the instincts of a connoisseur, and esteemed Hilliard highly: "...and the hand, or eye / By Hilliard drawne, is worth a history / By a worse painter made...", and he would scarcely have been satisfied with the work of any lesser artist. The miniature shows Donne just before he entered Thavies Inn [at the Inns of Court].' David Piper described Donne in this portrait: 'clearly as a young spark of high fashion: elegantly clad, ear-ringed, one slender hand on the sword, hair fashionably long' (The Image of the Poet, 1982).

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Category: Books / Books, Maps and Manuscripts

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