Footnotes

• This miniature is commensurate with Isaac Oliver's portrait miniature of a Gentleman in the Duke of Portland's Collection (Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire). Certainly, Bingham's inscription on the reverse indicates that her own version resulted from having copied directly from the 16th-century original.
  
  Although Bingham has named the sitter on the obverse as 'Sir Philip Sydney' [sic], the author of the 'Defence of Poesy' and 'Astrophel and Stella', the identification of Oliver's sitter has proven problematic. In the Welbeck librarian's catalogue raisonné of 1916, the Portland version is documented simply as 'A Gentleman', given the absence of any tangible association between poet and portrait. However, it would appear that at the time Bingham executed the present lot, the sitter's identity was perceived - by the artist at least - to be indubitable (R. W. Goulding, The Welbeck Abbey Miniatures belonging to His Grace the Duke of Portland K.G., G.C.V.O., Oxford, 1916, no.24, p.68, pl.IV).