There is also no question that the actual art of portrait miniature, such as we understand it at the present day, arose from that of painting portraits on manuscripts, and, as we have already pointed out in another place, it may further be derived from the similar portraits attached to treaties and to documents handed over to ambassadors. The illumination of a portrait of Francis I. on the ratification of a treaty of peace with England, August 18th, 1527, is a case in point. It represents the French King in excellent fashion, delineating character as well as portraiture, and is the work of a painter of no mean skill and discernment. Similar portraits of Henry VIII., and Philip and Mary, dated 1543 and 1556, and painted in England, are not of such a high character as is the one of Francis, but still are sufficient to enable us to regard them as true portraits, representative of the monarchs as they were. Who first, says Mr. Cust, cut out the portrait in miniature from an illumination, and inserted it in a jewelled or ivory case or picture-box, it is impossible to surmise, but such a caprice, once started, was likely quickly to become popular. Who first gave up the use of vellum for such portraits, and found that a playing card in use at that day was a more convenient material on which to paint, we also do not know; nor who, again, stretched a very fine piece of vellum or chicken-skin upon the playing-card, and used that as his basis, but the earliest Elizabethan miniatures painted in England are done in one of these two methods.