Robert Herrick, the Human Figure, and the English Mannerist Aesthetic

Abstract

Early modern visual and poetic arts in England are often, to varying degrees, diverse outworkings of a common aesthetic. This does not mean that a single aesthetic informs all the arts of late-sixteenthand early-seventeenth-century England, but simply that various relations between diverse arts are real and demonstrable. To analyze artifacts in one medium while bearing in mind the form of those in another may illuminate the first analysis and assist the delineation of a common aesthetic suspected to lie beneath diverse arts. This essay reads Robert Herrick's poetic representation of the female human figure in the light of contemporary miniaturist theory and practice.' In Hesperides, Herrick beautifies and objectifies woman by way of a definable aesthetic.2 Herrick's beautiful female form is constructed in harmony with the local English version of the mannerist aesthetic chiefly and initially defined (in its miniature portrait mode) by the work and theory of Nicholas Hilliard.3 In fact, a similar miniaturist aesthetic underlies the theory and practice of Hilliard, Edward Norgate, Henry Peacham, and the former goldsmith Robert Herrick.4 This aesthetic, in the very best figure-work of Hilliard and Herrick, is characterized by the presence of such elements of style as grace (grazia), invention (invenzione), technical precision, and the effortless conquering of accepted artistic problems (the difficulta/facilita formula). It is the aesthetic of high Maniera.5 One may observe in the poems of Hesperides Herrick's struggle