2024 The Year of Esther Inglis!

Cinquante Octonaires . . . Dediez a monseigneur le Prince, pour ses étrennes, de l’an, 1607. RCIN 1047001. Royal Library. Windsor.

2024 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Esther Inglis on 10 August 1624. Throughout the year we’ll be blogging in this space about many of her works on or close to the dates when they originally appeared. We’re beginning with the magnificent self-portrait, in a manuscript dedicated to Prince Henry when he was about thirteen years old. Only four of these full-color portraits are known to survive, all made between 1605 and 1606 when she was living in London and may have been learning from miniature masters, Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver. The other three manuscripts were given to Christian Friis, Chancellor of Denmark (July 1606), Thomas Egerton, Lord Ellesmere (New Year’s 1606), and Ludovic Stewart, 2nd Duke of Lennox (New Year’s 1607). The copy of Antoine de la Roche Chandieu’s popular Octonaires was a New Year’s gift for Prince Henry in 1607.