V&A's pocket-sized portraits

You can't lug a great big oil painting around in your handbag, so before the advent of photography the portrait miniature was ideal as a portable likeness of a loved one.

At the end of the 18th century, for instance, British artists in India made a good trade in painting portraits small enough to send home by post or be carried in hand luggage. These intimate likenesses were made to be held and viewed closely and to be presented as tokens of affection and loyalty.

This excellent exhibition at the V&A's new Portrait Miniatures Gallery not only displays some exquisite examples of the form, but also explores its history and the changes in techniques and materials.

From the 16th century, miniatures of Hans Holbein and Nicholas Hilliard (that great master of the form) to later artists such as Susannah-Penelope Rosse (a woman miniaturist at the end of the 17th century) and the sentimental portraits of the early Victorians, the miniature portrait remained in vogue for the best part of 400 years.

Developing from the colourful medieval manuscript illumination, this exhibition covers the period of the miniature portrait's inception, in about 1520. Initially using watercolours painted on vellum, the surface later changed to ivory at the beginning of the 18th century, lending it a more luminescent sheen.

Though the style of the miniature changed considerably over time, restrictions in size did not hinder the expression of strongly individual styles. The pensive, downward gaze of Holbein's portrait of Mrs Jane Small, for instance, reveals a startling naturalism missing from Hilliard's stiff, iconographic portrait of his young wife, Alice

Hilliard, even though the Holbein was executed 50 years earlier. Hilliard also famously depicted Elizabeth I at her most bejewelled and ruffed. At the time, the Virgin Queen was well into her 50s, but the beauty of Hilliard's Elizabeth simply transcends time.

The Georgian silhouetted profile is what springs to mind when we think of the miniature portrait, since it became almost commonplace in the home. But you will come away from this display with a deeper understanding of the form's varied riches.

Ongoing, Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road SW7, daily 10am to 5.45pm (Wed and last Fri of every month to 10pm), free. Tel: 020 7942 2000. Tube: South Kensington