LONDON, UK.- The V&A will open a new Portrait Miniatures Gallery on 2 March 2005 with masterpieces by Hans Holbein, the Elizabethans Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, Samuel Cooper - who painted both Cromwell and Charles II - and Richard Cosway, miniature painter to the Prince Regent.

The new gallery will display 140 paintings from the national collection of British miniatures which is held at the V&A. Together they will bring to life this unique art form, tracing its development from its origins in the illuminated manuscript. It will look at how in Britain it started in the court of Henry VIII, flourished during the reign of Charles I and during the Restoration, and had its heyday in the 19th century before the rise of photography.