(Updated April 2019) A miniature portrait in captain’s (over three years) undress uniform, 1787–95, with a black stock. This miniature was painted in Livorno (Leghorn), Italy, in late 1794, at which time Nelson was serving in the Mediterranean in command of the ‘Agamemnon’, 64 guns. The name of the painter is not recorded but it was probably a local Italian artist. Around the time that this miniature was produced, Nelson began an extramarital affair in Italy with an opera singer called Adelaide Correglia. However, he sent the miniature home (via his uncle, Mr Suckling) to his wife, Frances, in England, who remained ignorant of his infidelity. Writing to Frances in a letter dated 12 December 1794, Nelson explained that ‘I have sent to Mr Suckling a miniature of myself. I don't know it is a strong likeness but I know it will be acceptable. I shall take another opportunity to send Josiah's [Frances's son by her first marriage, Lieutenant (later Captain) Josiah Nisbet] who is very well and says the picture is not the least like me. Everybody else says it is, but I believe he is right.’ This letter crossed with one from Frances, in which – unaware that he had already commissioned a miniature of himself – she wrote to Nelson that ‘I wished very much you had sat, for your picture. I am told Italy is the place to have it done. Is it possible? I mean a small one.’ For naval families in this period, miniature portraits were very important, creating a feeling of connection to loved ones who were serving overseas and helping to mitigate the pain of separation. In May 1797, Frances recorded wearing a miniature of Nelson – probably this one – at a dinner with Captain Edward Berry. Writing to Nelson about the meeting, she noted that Berry ‘begged to see your picture which he had seen me wear’. Women in this period often wore miniatures of their husbands as jewellery in an outward performance of constancy and sentimentality, qualities which were then regarded as desirable feminine virtues. Nelson later separated from Frances after he entered into a relationship with Emma, Lady Hamilton, but she nonetheless kept this miniature. Long after Nelson’s death, Frances is supposed to have often showed the miniature to one of her son Josiah’s daughters: she would look at it affectionately, kiss and say to her granddaughter, also called Frances, ‘When you are older, little Fan, you too may know what it is to have a broken heart’. The miniature was subsequently inherited by one of Frances’s granddaughters (perhaps ‘little Fan’), from whom it was purchased by the 3rd Earl Nelson. It entered the National Maritime Museum as part of the family collection from Trafalgar House, near Salisbury, after the house was sold in 1950.