Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues
This colorful miniature apparently served as the model for an engraving for Plate III of the section on Picts and ancient Britons in Theodor de Bry’s publication of Thomas Hariot's Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, published in 1590. The Pictish illustrations were intended to remind readers that early natives of the British Isles existed in a savage state similar to natives in the Americas. A Young Daughter of the Picts was the second miniature attributed to Le Moyne from his drawings of early indigenous peoples, most of which are now known only through engravings. The first miniature identified as his work, and the only one from Le Moyne's drawings of Timucuan people, is Laudonnière and King Athore, which was featured in Part 2 of de Bry's America and is in the James Hazen Hyde collection of the New York Public Library.
The drawing we present today is a harmonious embodiment of Le Moyne’s two known subject areas, ethnological drawings and botanicals. The colorfully ornamented body of the young woman, with her high waist, full thighs, and long hair rippling in waves to her hips, evokes his drawings of the Timucuan women, who also tattooed their bodies through a process Le Moyne describes in his Florida observations. Her botanical tattoos, such as the cornflowers on her waist and wrists, and the heartsease on her waist, calves, and hips, also bear comparison with Le Moyne’s existing botanical illustrations. In addition, Le Moyne decorates her with species newly introduced to Western Europe, thus signaling his botanical sensibilities and knowledge, though rendering her slightly anachronistic.
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P.S. Read more about the history of tattoos here.