The Hidden Meanings in the Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I

foreign [Music] we all probably have a certain image of Elizabeth as this glamorous ageless Beauty and that was no accident Elizabeth's Reign is absolutely synonymous with portraits there are over a hundred surviving images of Elizabeth that date from her lifetime anybody in a position of leadership and Authority has to display their image she knew she needs to be seen to be believed portraits in Elizabeth's Reign aren't simply to be hung on walls and to accurately represent the queen Elizabeth was the Mistress of propaganda it was the most audacious work of spin centuries before the kind of political Spin Doctors that we think about today [Music] the idea that a woman could rule for so many decades unmarried without being deposed and be regarded now as a monarch of great success is just incredible really she's gone from being Henry VII's daughter a princess with very little chance of succeeding to the throne to a queen of England who's trying to navigate her way in a man's world we see her in her portraits go from a girl to an icon [Music] at the turn of the 16th century portraiture in England was still very much in its infancy in fact in terms of the European perspective it was way behind in the low countries for example portraiture had started to become really popular and the same in Italy and we start to see lots of artists coming from other European countries to seek patronage in places like France where we get Leonardo da Vinci and then we get the German artist Hans Holbein who arrives at the court of Henry VII in the 1530s and this is really a huge turning point for English portraiture because holbein's focus is very much on realism and attention to detail and suddenly the portraits that have once been very flat very two-dimensional become very real with the individual leaping out from the canvas we also see at Henry VII's court that Miniatures start to become more popular as well because they are portable so they're more personal they can be used and incorporated into Jewels for example so we know that Henry VII's sixth wife Catherine Parr was very fond of miniatures Henry VII Edward VI and Mary the first all had portraits of themselves painted and we see this happening across Europe as well monarchs rulers members of the royal family all start to have portraits of themselves being painted increasingly during Henry's Reign and obviously with his children growing up but then through into Elizabeth's Reign portraits and portrait Miniatures in particular became really important as part of the Diplomatic marriage networks as well as being a sign of loyalty that courtiers would have hung in their houses or even you know really small Miniatures around their necks Elizabeth was the only child of Henry VIII by Anne Berlin she was born on the 7th of September 1533 at Greenwich Palace and to begin with at the time of her birth she was the king's official Heir but this wasn't a state of affairs that Henry was prepared to accept and Elizabeth was born very much in the anticipation that a brother a male Heir would soon follow tragically this never transpires and before her third birthday Elizabeth's mother amberlin was executed on charges of adultery and incest charges that were almost certainly falsified and from that point on Elizabeth is declared illegitimate and it's a state of affairs that is never rectified by her father because although Elizabeth is later restored to her place in the line of succession her father never legally legitimates her and this is a sticking point that Elizabeth is forced to fight against for the rest of her life particularly when she becomes Queen and she uses portraiture as a way of asserting her legitimacy there aren't actually many surviving portraits of Elizabeth that date from before her time as Queen but the family of Henry VII is one of the earliest that we have which once hung in the Palace of Whitehall where it's actually set it was commissioned by Henry VII in around about 1545. it's the dynastic piece as it's intended to emphasize continuity within the Tudor dynasty the central focus is Henry sat in the middle who is flanked by Jane Seymour his third wife who crucially is dead at this point but her inclusion is merited because she had been the mother of the Kings longed for male Heir Prince Edward who we can see on the king's other side in a way it was an attempt to sort of try and forget all the chopping and changing of Henry's marriages and instead really suggests a happy family situation that actually of course infamously didn't exist although Henry did not intend that either of his daughters should succeed him they were still an important part of Henry's family and that's why Mary and Elizabeth are included around her neck Elizabeth wears an initial jaw and initial Jewels were extremely popular in the 1530s and 1540s but one thing about this piece in particular is striking it represents the initial a which can only be representative of Elizabeth's mother and Berlin so why would Elizabeth choose to identify herself with amberlin in this blatant piece of Tudor propaganda perhaps it was a symbol of loyalty perhaps this necklace had been given to her unfortunately is one of the questions that we'll never be able to know the answer for sure foreign it was probably the following year when another portrait of Elizabeth was painted perhaps on her father's orders and throughout her life Elizabeth was extremely fashion conscious and this portrait really reflects that because she was dressed in the finest and the costliest materials she's got Crimson satin and she's also wearing a very magnificent collection of jewels but the emphasis on this portrait when Elizabeth was around 13 years old is really her learning and her piety because you can see she's got her finger marking the page of a book it's probably a copy of the Bible or the New Testament this really emphasizes Elizabeth's scholarly abilities for which she was renowned having been this demoted figure after the execution of her mother amberlyn Henry's final wife Catherine Parr has gone to great efforts to try and bring the family back together in some ways she was a very precocious very intelligent young woman proficient in languages Catherine Parr was an educated learned woman too who with Elizabeth together they would read the Bible they would conduct translations so this represents a Pious precociously intelligent and able young woman at the end of her father's life about to face the prospect now of her Young Brother Edward VI becoming King the only thing to note about this portrait is that Elizabeth is very clearly being identified as Henry VII's daughter as per the inscription which says Elizabeth the King's Daughter so she's not legitimate but she is still an important part of Henry Gates family and this portrait also later appears in Henry VII's inventory which suggests that it may have been commissioned on his orders thank you in 1553 Elizabeth's half-sister Mary succeeds as Queen of England and she's the first queen remnant of England to be crowned the idea of female monarchy is quite unpopular because it's unprecedented in England people are unsure about what's going to happen and Elizabeth has a particularly difficult time under Mary in 1554 she was accused of complicity in the white Rebellion to overthrow her half-sister much to her distress she was forced to endure a spell of imprisonment in the Tower of London and given that her mother met her end there we can only imagine Elizabeth's Terror at this perilous situation on the anniversary of her mother's execution Elizabeth is released from the tower but she's taken to endure a spell of house imprisonment under the custodian ship of Sir Henry Bedingfield and it's very clear that Mary Harbors this huge distrust for Elizabeth nevertheless by 1558 it was very clear that Mary wasn't going to produce any children of her own she'd experienced probably two Phantom pregnancies and it's only at this point that Elizabeth's ascendancy to the throne has gone from being a possibility to a certainty Mary died on the 17th of November 1558 and Elizabeth succeeded to the throne on a wave of popular and heartfelt enthusiasm on the 15th of January 1559 Elizabeth was crowned at Westminster Abbey we see a dramatic change in Elizabeth's portraiture as well from the time that she becomes Queen because she's gone from being Henry VII's daughter a princess with very little chance of succeeding to the throne to a queen of England who's trying to navigate her way in a man's world and establish and certify her Authority and portraiture provides a very important way for her to do this it may have been around this time that a portrait depicting her in full coronation regalia was painted to Mark the occasion although the only surviving image we have of this now dates from much later in Elizabeth's life so it's depicting a 26 year old Queen even though it was painted in 1600 when Elizabeth was coming to the end of her life and here we have the classic image of of queenship Elizabeth holding the orb and scepter wearing her Herman mantle showing herself enthroned as she would appeared at the coronation and this in a way is the kind of poster girl image and I think many people perhaps see this image as representing the accession of the first queen such was this sort of success and ubiquity of Elizabeth's reign but the reality here is in fact that Elizabeth is wearing the hand-me-down gowns of her half-sister Mary who in fact was the first crown queen of England and on Mary's death the the coronation robe was hastily refurbished but then worn Again by Elizabeth and I think that's a timely and instructive reminder really that actually Elizabeth did follow her sister Mary who did wear the crown for the first time and in many ways Elizabeth was able to learn from her sister's mistakes but also kind of benefit from the fact that it would be Mary who had been the first woman to wear the crown and had to negotiate power and being a queen in what was essentially still very much a man's world [Music] the Hampton portrait which was commissioned in the early 1560s is a very rare full-length portrait of Elizabeth is one of the only full-length images that we have of the queen and this was painted very early in her Reign when Elizabeth was the most eligible bride in Europe so you can see the fruit and the foliage in the background which is very much an emphasis on fertility the colors of red and white that have been chosen in Elizabeth's costume were an emphasis on the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster that marked the combined dynasties that Elizabeth had descended from we can also see Elizabeth holding a glove in a sign of power this is very much an image that would have been sent out potentially to suitors who were eager to obtain the Queen's hand in marriage it shows and represents the young queen that she was at this point but actually is responding to a particularly perilous time because quite soon after Elizabeth's succession in 1562 she suffered from smallpox and indeed for a time was unconscious there was a sense that her life was very much in danger and therefore the future was in very precarious position and so this really was a kind of attempt to re-establish her Authority after that brush with death thinking about her both as a Tudor but also as a future wife because although she was Queen at this point she was also of course expected absolutely to marry not least to have a male partner in government women were not regarded as able to govern and rule on their own but to provide an air in the first few years of Elizabeth's Reign the emphasis was very much on who was the queen going to marry and particularly in 1559 rumors began to abound of Elizabeth's relationship with her favorite Robert Dudley course Robert Dudley was married although when his wife died in mysterious circumstances there were continued rumors that he might end up managing to convince Elizabeth to marry him unfortunately for him the death of his wife put an end to all of those hopes because Elizabeth realized that to marry him now would permanently tarnish her reputation and again there was suggestion among hostile agents and ambassadors that actually perhaps she wasn't even a virgin that she in fact had slept with Robert Dudley and others or that she had some kind of physical impediment which meant that she couldn't have children and therefore wouldn't be a desirable marriage Prospect to a foreign Prince so these portraits are saying she's fertile she's chased she's all the things that you would want as well as trying to emphasize her Authority and we begin to see in this period the need to mask the fact that actually she's getting old it's important to remember that Elizabeth represented for the Catholics of Europe and of course the Catholics in England those who had been loyal to Catherine of Aragon and then to Elizabeth Sister Mary she was this illegitimate pretended Queen who should not have exceeded the throne she was Protestant she was unmarried and in fact the rightful Queen was the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots who on Elizabeth's succession claimed the English throne so Elizabeth's position was precarious in the early years and that was expressed in a number of plots and rebellions so we begin to see an attempt to in portraiture respond to a number of different threats first of all emphasizing the Queen's virginity at the beginning of the 1570s there were those at court privately who had begun to suspect that Elizabeth may not marry but that was certainly not the image that she was trying to project which we can see in both the Phoenix and the Pelican portrait both of which were created by Nicholas Hilliard Healing Art was actually a Goldsmith by trade and he didn't end up painting very many half-length portraits in fact the Phoenix and the Pelican portrait are two of the few half-length portraits that he ever painted because Hilliard's skill was really with Miniatures but like Holbein before him the emphasis in his paintings was really on realism and detail relatively recent work has shown that these portraits came from the same workshop and actually some of the tree dating has shown that they were made around the same time so we can see the Pelican and the Phoenix portrait as a pair and we can see the face pattern inverted the Phoenix was a symbol that was used regularly by Elizabeth and it was also symbolic of Chastity and rebirth she is wearing a costume of the very highest value Elizabeth was really renowned for her wardrobe and when she died she reputedly had nearly 2 000 dresses but all of these were composed of separate Elements which we can see here we can see the Magnificent rough that she wears around her neck we can see the fabulous sleeves and a magnificent bodice all of which had been embroidered this was really high status work of the highest quality the Pelican portrait tries to convey a similar message it's named because of the Pelican jewels that Elizabeth can be seen wearing and like the Phoenix this was a symbol that Elizabeth adopted fairly regularly throughout her reign the emphasis on this portrait is really in motherhood because the Pelican was believed to draw blood from its own breast with which to feed its young so it's symbolic of Elizabeth as the mother of her Nation foreign sort of time that the Phoenix and the Pelican portraits have been painted we've also got the darling portrait of Elizabeth we know that Elizabeth sat for at least five artists throughout the course of her life but this image is particularly important because it was the face from this portrait that many of Elizabeth's later portraits were based on this face pattern that became the the officially sanctioned one which it was ordered had to be used in portraits of the queen and all portraits had to be signed off by the queen Sergeant painter essentially creating a kind of censorship around the image of Elizabeth and we think that for the later portraits of her Reign it was actually her ladies her ladies in Waiting who would sit for the portraits because the gowns that they wear Accord with those that appear in the wardrobe accounts essentially there's a cut and paste job that the face pattern is then added into the image denoting Elizabeth when in fact Elizabeth hadn't sat for the portrait herself the image has now very sadly faded from its original and Elizabeth appears almost quite cold what's also really important about this piece is that it's a huge reflection of status so we can see Elizabeth's Crown in the background we can also see the double String of Pearls that she wears around her neck she's carrying an ostrich feather fan which may have been gifted to her by one of her courtiers and also there hangs are particularly important Jewel from her waist which is a ruby surrounded by images of several Roman gods and this is really intended as a reflection of Elizabeth's classical learning so the classics were extremely popular in the 16th century and we know that Elizabeth was extremely fond of reading about the classics so this also may have been a gift from one of her cultures intended as a compliment towards the Queen's learning foreign [Music] see the execution of Mary Queen of Scots who's been Elizabeth's prisoner for the last 19 years and Elizabeth faces a huge backlash from Catholic Europe more and more the prospect looms of finally Spanish decisive action against Elizabeth in the summer of 1588 Philip II of Spain launched 130 ships his Infamous Armada to set sail against England Elizabeth gave a rousing speech to her troops at Tilbury in which she urged them to fight and made that very famous saying I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman but I have the heart and stomach of a king and a king of England too in fact this is a hugely defining moment in Elizabeth's Reign because the Armada was the greatest threat that she had faced to date in many ways Elizabeth's Reign is absolutely identified with the defeat of the Spanish Armada although arguably it was more a victory for the English weather but I would argue that actually the Armada portray is incredibly significant and Powerful for its symbolism and in a way it shows just how successfully Elizabeth had over the course of her Reign managed to essentially override the reality of her femininity and the idea that she was a woman with a body that was seen as weak and problematic in fact what she's doing in this poetry is using her body to make as powerful a political statement as Henry VII did in that famous Holbein mural what she's doing in this portrait is saying her body her natural body is one and the same as England what's really interesting in Elizabeth's portraits at this time is that full of symbolism and full of messages and this one is very much of Victory so we see Elizabeth with her hand on the globe it's actually pointing at Virginia which had been named in her honor as the Virgin Queen and we see again the crown in the background symbolic of Elizabeth's Authority and of monarchy to her left we see the Spanish ships which are being tossed around in the sea are in utter terminal compared with the English ships on the other side which are sailing in calm Waters and the message here is Elizabeth's reign as being one of peace and prosperity by contrast to the Tamil that's taking place in Catholic Europe which Elizabeth is turning her back to beside Elizabeth we've got the figure of a mermaid and mermaids were believed to be Temptation for soldiers it's this symbol of England triumphing over Catholic Europe whilst the mermaid had been sent to tempt the Spanish soldiers however a lot of the imagery in this portrait is all a bit of an illusion it's sending out the message that Elizabeth is all-powerful but it's a message that her government and the queen herself wanted people to believe at a similar time to the Armada portrait we also have the rainbow portrait of Elizabeth which hangs in Hatfield house I think this is one of my favorite pictures of Elizabeth it's kind of audacious and it's cunning she's still wearing the mask of use that we associate with her younger portraits this is very much a high status portrait that is intended to Dazzle that's intended to impress and to convey Elizabeth's magnificence she is wearing a rainbow the Latin inscription in the background basically says that there can be no rainbow without the sun Elizabeth is the sun she is the queen she oversees everything we can see that her dress shows a design of eyes and ears reflecting the fact that Elizabeth was believed to be able to see and hear everything that was going on in her kingdom which of course she was because she had this tremendous spy Network under the auspices of Francis Walsingham at this time she also wears a serpent Jewel on her sleeve this is a reflection of her wisdom because the serpent was believed to be an extremely cunning creature she also wears the crown in her headdress another indication of her majesty so in a response to the reality which is Elizabeth weak towards the end of her Reign feeling vulnerable in a faction-ridden court but here instead denoting power all-knowing or seeing and a youthful image of authority in 1592 we also see the production of one of the most iconic images of Elizabeth the so-called ditchley portrait this was probably commissioned by Sir Henry Lee who was the Queen's Champion for many years and probably painted in order to commemorate a visit that Elizabeth made to Sir Henry Lee at his home at ditchley near Oxford in 1592. so Henry Lee had been living quite openly with his mistress and vavasu and she had previously had an affair with the Earl of Oxford which had earned both a spell of imprisonment in the tower however the ditchley portrayed with its theme of forgiveness is reflective of the fact that Elizabeth has now accepted that Sir Henry Lee has been living openly with Anne thank you Elizabeth is seen standing on the globe again she's wearing an extremely high status lavish costume and some of the jewels that she wears are possibly those that can be identified in her 1587 inventory so these may have been real pieces that were owned by Elizabeth it's also depicting both the Shadows of the threats and the turbulent years that had preceded this moment as well as the prospect of light that Elizabeth always brought a sort of goddess Celestial figure but also just far of course at odds with the reality of Elizabeth at this point when she's in her 60s in the last few years of Elizabeth's Reign life was quite difficult for many of her subjects because they'd been bad harvests and the economy wasn't going particularly well so the standard of living had dropped it was now becoming clear that the queen was getting old her hair had fallen out and she was reduced to wearing wigs her teeth had rotted from eating the sugary Confections of which she was so formed but nevertheless she did her best to try and retain this Mosque of Youth for as long as possible this is a newly authenticated portrait which was thought to come from the workshop of Marcus gits the painter of the ditchley portraits and this it seems was a portrait that slipped through the censorship net which attempted to catch any portraits which showed Elizabeth aging which really depicted her mortality and you've got her crown there sort of slipped off it's really a sense of Time marching on it gives us a kind of remarkable tantalizing glimpse of of the reality which for all of us over centuries it's kind of eluded us [Music] and I suppose some people draw parallels with the very authentic picture of the current Queen Elizabeth II by Lucian Freud in a way those two portraits are interesting because for Elizabeth II to be shown to be Aging in the way that the Lucian Freud uh portrait shows is is just a mark of her strength her longevity it shows in contrast here that actually such length had been gone to to try and prevent this kind of image emerging which showed that the end of Elizabeth's Reign she was really really old and that of course would have been a source of great deal of anxiety and uncertainty for people this really does show quite how duped people have been over the centuries when we think of Elizabeth in those masks of Youth portraits when in fact by the end this is more accurately what she'd have looked like oh [Music] on the 24th of March 1603 Elizabeth died at Richmond Palace and to begin with there is a great sense of mourning however there's also the great hope and expectation of what the reign of James the first may bring we begin to see starting in around 1607 this wave of nostalgia for the reign of good Queen Beth Queen Elizabeth and suddenly there's this huge mass of Revival in her portraits and we see this in an image that was probably painted around seven years after her death finally in many ways you know the censorship and the control had been lifted and people could reflect back on Elizabeth as she would have been and appeared at the end of her reign and so this is really one of the more real depictions of Elizabeth here is a queen that looks care worn and looks exhausted we can see that in her pose with her head rested on her hand so no longer is she the queen be decked in the Magnificent costumes and the Magnificent Jewels trying to project an image of majesty over one shoulder we see Father Time leaning and the other we see death the message is that even for a queen and a queen as great as Elizabeth immortality isn't an option death comes to us all the portraits of Elizabeth's Reign and there were very many of them were deliberately creating and sustaining actually a fiction and the fiction was first of all that this is a young fertile perspective bride when she first became Queen but later that actually she is this selfless virgin figure that she's this kind of goddess figure that she's this completely all-knowing powerful figure whose influence stretches across the country and potentially across the globe and all of this was to in some sense distract from the reality which was Elizabeth was an unmarried Queen so an unmarried Queen was problematic in terms of protecting her reputation but it was also of course essential to married to provide an heir and preserve the succession she needed to appear young because she represented a dead end the cheetah Dynasty died with her and it's kind of remarkable that Elizabeth is regarded I think as one of the great monarchs of History because the reality is she was this really negligent Queen who didn't do the job that everyone it was expected to do which was to ensure the succession she willfully just chose not to marry and she didn't even name an heir and then she died essentially you know this woman who just wanted to maintain the fiction that she was going to live forever it was the most audacious work of spin you know centuries before the kind of political Spin Doctors that we think about today portraits are some of the most important sources that we have when studying not only Elizabeth the queen but also Elizabeth the woman Her Image was very tightly controlled but what we also have to remember is that there wasn't a great precedent for female wall at this time Elizabeth's successors the early Stuart Kings didn't have the same kind of issues about gender or about legitimacy that Elizabeth faced so their portraits were trying to convey very different kinds of messages although Elizabeth herself believed in the superiority of men she believed that she herself was the exception and each of her portraits provide a way of her conveying this important message she's gone from a girl to a woman from a woman to a queen and a queen who used her image to convey all kinds of mysterious elements about her personality and her queenship as someone who's path to the throne was littered with uncertainty Her Image reflects her battle to establish herself as one of the leading female authorities in Europe one of the most powerful women in history [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: History Hit

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Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, elizabeth i, queen elizabeth i, tudor history, queen elizabeth, elizabeth i documentary, tudor royal, tudor queens, tudor queen elizabeth, elizabeth the first, queen of england, the tudors, hans holbein, anne boleyn death, anne boleyn and henry, anne boleyn and elizabeth tudor, henry viii, tudor art, queen elizabeth portrait, tudor portraits, history hit documentary, history hits youtube, nicola tallis, anna whitelock historian

Id: 7XVDJMW2ZKU

Length: 37min 23sec (2243 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 11 2023