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The True Picture of a Woman Pict

About this illustration

Creator

Theodor de Bry

Date created

1585–1586

License

This work is believed to be in the public domain. Users are advised to make their own copyright assessment and to understand their rights to fair use.

Source

Original image housed by Documenting the American South / UNC Libraries

Related media

Learn more

• Search LEARN NC for Celts, colonial, drawings, Great Britain, illustrations, John White, North Carolina, Picts, Scotland, and Virginia.

In the classroom

• See our collection of articles on visual literacy for ideas on using photographs meaningfully in the classroom.

Size: 462×650

“The Trvve Picture of a VVomen Picte.” Theodor de Bry’s engraving of a Pict woman (a member of an ancient Celtic people from Scotland), published in Thomas Hariot’s 1588 book A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. The woman stands with a long spear held upright in her left hand, and two long spears held horizontally in her right hand. She wears only a large ring around her waist, from which a curved sword hangs behind her, and a smaller ring around her neck. Much of her body appears to be painted or tattooed. In the background, two buildings stand on hillsides.

Theodor de Bry was a Flemish-born engraver and publisher who based his illustrations for Hariot’s book on the paintings of colonist John White. Most of the book’s illustrations depict the native people encountered by Hariot and White on their North American expedition, but A Brief and True Report also contains five engravings of the Picts and their neighbors in ancient Scotland. De Bry included these images “to show how that the inhabitants of the Great Bretannie have been in times past as savage as those of Virginia.”

The text accompanying this image reads:

The women of the Picts above said were no worse for the wars than the men. And were painted after the manner following, having their heads bare, did let their hair flying about their shoulders wear painted with griffon heads, the low parts and thighs with lion faces, or some other beast as it comes best into their fancy, their breast hath a manner of a half moon, with a great star, and four lesser in both the sides, their paps [nipples] painted in manner of beams of the son, and among all this a great lightening star upon their breasts. The saids of some points or beams, and the whole belly as a sun, the arms, thighs, and legs well-painted, of diverse figures: They did also carry about their necks an iron ring, as the men did, and such a girdle with the sword hanging, having a pick or a lance in one hand, and two darts in the other.