Portrait Miniature of Elizabeth I

Images and portraits

This tiny image was painted by Nicholas Hilliard in watercolour on fine calf skin. It shows Elizabeth I before a red curtain background, with her long unbound hair signifying her maidenhood, her virginity. Her necklace of rubies and pearls demonstrate her wealth, while her crown signifies that she is subject to no other worldly power, its arched top identifying it as a 'closed crown' which only emperors were entitled to wear.

This portrait seems a simple likeness of a young Queen. In fact it was painted in about 1600, when Elizabeth was 66. The puzzle is why it is not a realistic portrait and why it celebrates her virginity, emphasising her childless state, the cause of the uncertainty and anxiety surrounding who would inherit the throne.

Today we are so accustomed to photographs of the rich and famous, that it is easy to forget the comparative novelty of image-making at the time of Elizabeth I, and the degree of artifice involved. We assume that a portrait is a likeness, taken from a sitting. But a draft proclamation of 1563 reveals how Elizabeth attempted to control the production of her portrait. 'Some special person that shall be by her allowed' would create a 'pattern' to be copied by licensed painters. The Queen rarely sat for her portrait and most portraits follow a small number of 'patterns'. Nonetheless there were many unauthorised images, and in 1596 the Privy Council ordered public officers to assist in destroying 'unseemly' portraits.

The wider picture

Detail of Hilliard's miniature of Elizabeth I  © Hilliard's miniature was clearly not considered 'unseemly', since there are 16 surviving versions of this face 'pattern', known appropriately today as 'The Mask of Youth'. Hilliard reduced the Queen's features to a few schematic lines, thereby rejuvenating her face. In comparison, the 'pattern' by Isaac Oliver painted about 1590-2, probably from life, shows the harsh reality of the queen's age. Significantly only one finished miniature of this image survives. This was not merely the vanity of an old woman. Elizabeth's portraits have to be understood within a wider political and religious context.

In Elizabeth's time a woman ruler was considered unnatural, an attitude exemplified by John Knox's tract, the Blast against the monstrous regiment of women, railing against female rulers. Elizabeth came under intense pressure to marry and re-establish the customary order, whereby her husband would rule and she would produce an heir. But finding a husband was a political and religious headache.

England had become a Protestant kingdom after Henry VIII had split from Catholic Rome, declaring himself Head of the Church in England. Subsequently Henry's children Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I each in turn sought to impress their own faiths on a country divided between Catholics and Protestants. The violence of Mary's efforts to re-impose Catholicism, combined with her unpopular marriage to the King of Spain, gave Elizabeth pause for thought, and she proved ultimately unwilling to subject her country or herself to the rule of any master. By the age of 45, it was clear she would never produce an heir.

Personal emblems

Detail of Hilliard's miniature showing jewelled crown  © Elizabeth was the heart of government, and the focus of power in England. As a woman ruler she encouraged a unique court culture, exerting her authority through elaborate rituals of courtship with her male courtiers. This role-playing reached a pitch at the Accession Day ceremonial jousts, at which the queen demonstrated her power by receiving the homage of her knights. Each courtier would present her with a shield bearing an 'impressa', a combination of picture and motto 'borne by noble personages ...to notify some particular conceit', usually their devotion to the queen.

This highly artificial culture is reflected in many portraits of Elizabeth. Making a virtue of necessity, she encouraged the image of herself as the Virgin Queen, wedded to her kingdom. She took as personal emblems many of the symbols of virginity, including the white rose of purity associated with the Virgin Mary, the phoenix, a mythical bird that symbolises chastity because it is self-perpetuating, and the moon, symbol of the virgin Diana. Crescent-moon jewels are found in Elizabeth's hair in many portraits.

The reverence associated with the image of the Virgin Mary in Catholic countries was, in England, secularised and directed towards the Queen. John Dowland even wrote a song entitled 'Vivat Eliza for an Ave Maria'. Hilliard's image of the 'maiden' queen was thus in keeping with this culture.

Public response

The decorative locket case which contains Hilliard's miniature  © Another of Elizabeth's personal emblems was the pelican, plucking her breast to feed her young with her own blood. This image was used to symbolise Elizabeth's care for her people. The reciprocal popular response to the queen can be judged by the proliferation of her image in times of national crisis, such as the attempted invasion by the Spanish Armada in 1588.

When the Protestant Dutch leader, William the Silent, was assassinated in 1584, the fears for the Queen's safety were such that her council drew up an oath for loyal Englishmen to pledge to protect her. It was around this time that the fashion for wearing the Queen's image developed - images made in precious metals, as cameos, and as miniatures. The superb jewelled and enamelled case in which Hilliard's miniature is set demonstrates the expense to which some would go to house such an image. Again, this echoes the Catholic taste for wearing holy images.

In 1579 John Lyly wrote in praise of Elizabeth's virginity, 'If Virginity have such force, then what has this chaste Virgin Elizabeth done... [In] the space of twenty and odd years, with continual peace against all policies, with sundry miracles contrary to all hope, [she] has governed that noble Island'.

To Lyly, Elizabeth's virginity was the key to her good government; she had remained unmarried, and thus remained faithful to her country. The body politic of the realm and the Queen's own body were inseparable. To understand this we can see that to many contemporaries Elizabeth's portraits were not contrived propaganda, but representations of an ideal body politic. Some pragmatic courtiers had, by the time Hilliard painted this miniature of Elizabeth, begun to lay plans for after her death. But for many of her subjects, images of the Virgin Queen, with their reassuring message of her enduring youth and power, retained their force.

Did you know?

Miniatures are not called miniatures because they are small. In the Tudor period miniatures were painted in watercolour on fine calf skin (vellum). This technique was called limning from the Latin luminare meaning to illuminate, and was related to the art of hand painting religious manuscripts, which today we call illuminations. The Italian for illumination is miniatura from the Latin minium, meaning red lead. The English adopted the word miniatura in place of limning in the 17th century, and because of the similarity to words indicating smallness such as 'minor', miniature came to mean small.

Nicholas Hilliard was a goldsmith and developed special techniques for painting jewels. Pearls were painted with a raised blob of white and some shadowing to one side, topped with a touch of real silver which was then burnished "with a pretty little tooth of some ferret or stoat or other wild little beast", as Hilliard's own treatise records. Sadly silver tarnishes and the pearls in Hilliard's miniatures now appear black. Rubies were created by laying a ground of silver burnished to a shine, over which a heated needle was used to model the jewel out of resin stained red.

The royal image was believed to have good 'effects' because it was in some mysterious way part of the sitter. Unsurprisingly, her image could equally become a focus of abuse. In Catholic France her portrait was publicly burned and, it was reported, had been hung from a gallows but was apparently rescued by some patriotic Englishman. Sometimes the abuse bordered on black magic. In England there were cases of wax images of the Queen pierced with hog's bristles, and one of the models for Hilliard's Great Seal was found to be embedded in poison.

Elizabeth often gave miniatures without any setting, leaving the greater expense of having a suitable case made to the recipient. Owners often used the case to extend the symbolism of the miniature. Few elaborate cases survive today since many have been broken up for the jewels and gold. Examples are the Drake Jewel with the Queens emblem, the phoenix, painted on the lid, and the more complex so-called 'Armada' jewel. This jewel includes a miniature and medallic image of Elizabeth and two lids each decorated with symbols and mottoes.

Find out more

Books

The Cult of Elizabeth by Roy Strong (Thames and Hudson, 1977)

Gloriana, The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I by Roy Strong (Thames and Hudson, 1987)

Elizabeth the Queen by Alison Weir (Pimlico, 1999)

The Portrait Miniature in England by Katherine Coombs (V&A Publications, 1998)

Portrait Miniatures by Graham Reynolds (Cambridge University Press, 1988)

About the author

Katherine Coombs is Curator of Paintings at the V&A, and is the Museum's miniature specialist. She has contributed to various publications, and is author of The Portrait Miniature in England (V&A Publications, 1998).