The True Picture of a Woman Neighbor to the Picts

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

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Learn more

• Search LEARN NC for 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.

“The Trvve Picture of a VVomen Nigbour to the Pictes.” Theodor de Bry’s engraving of a member of a people neighboring the Picts in ancient Scotland. The illustration was 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 in her right hand, facing right. She wears a simple garment, and a curved sword hangs behind her from a belt around her waist. There appears to be a village in the background.

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:

Their women were appareled after this manner, but that their apparel was open before the breast, and did fastened with a little lesse, as our women do fasten their petticoat. They let hang their breasts out, as for the rest they did carry such weapons as the men did, and were as good as the men for the war.