Dunno Gary.  When I click on my link I get a V&A web page with a thumbnail of the portrait.  Then if I click on the thumbnail I get a full size version. 

All I can suggest is that you go to the V&A site and click on Collections, I think, and then search using the number I cite in my first message.  Maybe that will work for you.

--D

No need to wait until next year Gary.  After all I've been looking at this portrait without really seeing what it is for nearly ten years.  It's about time the truth was known, and not just by me. 

Still, I think you can figure it out for yourself if I supply one or two hints: 

What is the date of the portrait?

What hangs from the marigold pinned to the center of her bodice?

Make sense?

--D

Yay Gary, that's the Gary I know and love.  How many of those young women got married and wore their rings hanging from a string?  Generally they wore them on their fingers I would think.  Why do you think it's not on her finger but on a string?

Not sure what point you are making about her hair and eyes.  The eyes look glum to me.  A glum newlywed.

I'll leave Hilliard and Oxford aside for now, since I want to talk about Anne More Donne.  But as for the motto, I don't know if it's Donnean, or if Donne had anything to do with it.  But wouldn't a translation of it be, "She seems and truly is"?

Dennis--

What about "absence" and "presence(t)"? I. Bell argues quite often that Anne is "present" all the time in Donne's poetry. I think that the idea of "portrait" and art are nice points of departure for beginning to discuss Anne's relation to Donne's own art--presence and/or absence.

I agree with Julia, because of the nature of a portrait, we can't assume that the ring around the neck is anything but "better to see"--plus, it could be purely an artistic device.

As for the Latin--It looks like "Videtue et vere est" on the image. Is that correct? or are my eyes failing me? Videtur et vere est--would be "She seemed and truely she is"--the passive indicative form of "video" and the active indicative "est" lead us to read the absence and presence, simultaneously. She seems would be "videt"--simple active indicative.

What do we really know about Anne?

JWW

I agree, JW, that this portrait can provide us with a new point of departure.  Through pursuing Donne’s and the More family’s interest in portraiture, we can gain further insight into the absent presence.

Are you suggesting that a ring hanging on a string is merely easier to see than one on a finger?  It certainly does tend to focus the attention more.  But this is so precisely because of the nature of the portrait, an English portrait miniature, which (as Roy Strong says) “responded to and assimilated the cult of emblems and imprese, and extended its social significance by being adapted into the patterns of contemporary courtship.”

I like your translation too.  It expresses a transition in a brace of judgments surrounding the newlywed status of the sitter.

One thing we may now know about Anne is that she was learned and witty, a judgment made also by Donne himself, by Henry Wotton, and by Walton in his oddly reluctant way.

--DF

All you say about emblems, JW, is suggestive, and maybe something could be learned from the authorities you mention.

It's not clear to me that Hilliard is the painter.  I've asked experts how one would distinguish, for example, Isaac Oliver's early style from Hilliard's.  After all, Hilliard trained Oliver and Oliver worked at first in Hilliard's shop.  He certainly knew how to make a painting that looked like a Hilliard.  How then does one distinguish between a genuine Hilliard and an Oliver in Hilliard's style.  I haven't had an answer to that one yet.

They were very different kinds of men, as I understand them.  Oliver was an intellectual genius, whereas Hilliard was more along the lines of a craftsman who stuck to his craft.  His strong point was painting jewelry.  Hilliard's style was relatively static and can't be said to have developed in relation to various influences.  Oliver traveled to France and Italy and brought into his work the effects of having seen a good deal of work by Venetian masters.  Oliver was the rising new generation of artist and, in this as in some other ways, seems maybe more likely for this particular miniature.

Hilliard during this period worked mainly for members of the ruling class; he was the Queen's official miniaturist.  Oliver, on the other hand, had a studio in Blackfriars, not too far from Sir George More's house.

I wouldn't trade agreement about the identity of the sitter for the concession that Donne or some man put words on the sitter's forehead.  I prefer to think the words were her own, even if in the third person.  Not much evidence on this point either way, except that normally the design of a portrait miniature was a very personal collaboration by the sitter with the artist.

So go my thoughts.  Nice talking with you.

--DF

Hello Paul.  Yes, it is a lovely thing.  These miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver are breathtaking when you actually handle them and look at them closely with a glass.  I haven't had the chance to get that close to this one, because it's in a display case at the V&A.  But I was shown an Oliver at Windsor Castle, looked at it through a loup, and couldn't get over it for hours, it was so beautiful.

I agree with you about the motto.  It works as you say and as an element in the impresa, the whole ensemble:  pose, costume, dating, etc.

I suppose a plain gold ring does not have to be a wedding ring.  Still, most plain gold rings are wedding rings, and most wedding rings are plain gold rings.  Wouldn't you think a sitter wearing and an artist painting a ring such as this one would naturally consider that viewers might well think it a wedding ring, and if that were not the impression they intended wouldn't they paint something else?

Rings suspended on a cord are not unprecedented in earlier Renaissance portraiture.  I recall some somewhere.  Have to do some more work on that.

Thanks for the conversation, Paul.

D-It seems  that you are implying that "Anne" "needs" something to anchor the marriage--of course that works for what I think that you are trying to do with your reading. However, I think that there is perhaps some continuity and a general reading for the anchoring: the ring does anchor (that is the whole point) but this anchoring in terms of God and the trinity is a given that mankind seems to have a need to demonstrate, constantly, a kind of "remembering"/reader response (_Surprised by Sin_, Fish) so he/she doesn't forget. If the marriage and the circles are analogous to the Christian relationship of Christ (God/HG/Christ--bridegroom--husband) to church (mankind, sinner--wife), then there is no "need" to anchor, the anchoring is there already . . . then the portrait merely and quite cleverly demonstrates this relationship. Does that make sense? JWW

D--Okay, let's get to the skinnny. Without revealing too much of your future presentation, what evidence do we have that this is Anne? Am I missing something in the portrait? . . . or is this part of the "absent presence" point? That is, would your argument be just the same whether this is truly Anne or if this particular portrait portrays the "idea" of Anne? I agree that this portrait has to be of a woman of means or that she comes from a family that either has the available income for a sitting or that her family is important enough that a portrait might have been given by artist as gift to a benefactor.

As for the ring, did we come to some general understanding of why it is on the string? I'd really like to know more about the historical context for the practice and custom of wearing the/a ring, and what might be a reason why a woman would not wear a ring? Is she engaged? Has her marriage been annulled? Is her husband dead? Could she be wearing around her neck a ring that belonged to a parent? etc.

JWW