Nicholas Hilliard has helped form our ideas of the appearance of Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, Sir Francis Drake and James I among others. His painted works open a remarkable window onto the highest levels of English/British society in the later years of the sixteenth and the early years of the seventeenth century, the Elizabethan and Jacobeans ages. In this book Karen Hearn gives us an intimate portrait of Nicholas Hilliard, his life, his work and the techniques he used to produce his exquisite miniatures. Karen Hearn is curator of Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Art at the Tate Britain. She has written on Marcus Gheeraerts II, Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530-1630 and In Celebration: The Art of the Country House.