The specialist conferences on miniature portraits which the Tansey Miniatures Foundation has been organising these past ten years have enabled an in-depth examination of this particularly intimate genre of portrait painting.

In this third volume of conference proceedings, twenty-one internationally renowned experts from ten countries explore the miniature portrait from different perspectives, highlighting the private use of miniatures and contrasting it with their function in a more public context. Several authors provide new insights into important but hitherto little-known private and museum collections; others introduce specific artists. For the first time, this volume also addresses in significant depth specific technical aspects of creating and preserving portrait miniatures.