Peer-reviewed draft paper published in final version in: Premodern Rulership and Contemporary Political

Power. The King’s Body Never Dies, (eds.) Karolina Mroziewicz, Aleksander Sroczyński. Amsterdam: Am-
sterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. ISBN 978 94 6298 331 1

Emilia Olechnowicz (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)

The Queen’s Two Faces: The Portraiture of Elizabeth I of England

Throughout history, the idea of the king having two bodies has been used as a tool to strengthen
royal authority. When crowned and anointed with sacred oils, the king was no longer just a mortal
ruler, but also the figurative ‘head’ of the mystical body of the commonwealth (and in some cases
the Church). By granting a sovereign the status of a supernatural being, the body politic effectively
allowed a king to transcend his human limitations and frailties.1 However, one should not believe
that the king’s two bodies complemented one other harmoniously, creating a firm and stable unity.
In fact, their mutual relationship tended to be highly problematic: political body cannot be separated
from the person of the king, yet it is not synonymous with him.
The aim of the present paper is to offer a practical analysis of how the theory of the king’s
two bodies functioned during the Elizabethan era and, specifically, how it may have influenced arti-
stic practices of the time. The paper will examine how the complexities of this concept was reflec-
ted in portraits of Queen Elizabeth I: by using royal portraits from each decade of her reign as
examples, we will demonstrate how the naturalistic portraits from the first years of her reign were
eventually replaced by her political public image, that of the ever-beautiful, semi-divine Virgin Qu-
een.

I. SELF-PRESENTATION

From the beginning of her reign, Elizabeth – a young woman, and daughter of Anne Boleyn – faced
the problem of legitimacy. In order to present herself as the heiress of the sacred English royal tradi-

1Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1957), 7–41.
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tion, she utilised the legal concept of the king’s two bodies as a language to express her royal
claim,2 declaring in her accession speech:

As I am but one bodye naturallye Considered though by His permission a bodye politique to
governe; so I shall desyre yow all my Lordes… to bee assistant to me, that I with my Rulin-
ge and yow with your service may make a good accoumpt to Almighty God.3

Elizabeth’s authority was supported by creating a sense of continuity with the English monarchy.4 If
the king and his successor were the same person according to the law, then the qualities of the body
natural, such as gender, were irrelevant. The queen was thus trying to convince her subjects that
while her body natural was female, her immortal body politic was or could be thought of as male. In
her famous Tilbury speech, thought to have been delivered just before the Armada battle of 1588,
Elizabeth identified herself as both a feeble woman and a sacred majesty: “I know I have yt body
butt of a weake and feble woman; butt I have yt harte and Stomach of a kinge, and of a kynge of
England, too.”5
Both Carol Levin and Susan Frye assert that Elizabeth’s subjects viewed her as both “King
and Queen.” Levin quotes a speech from early in Elizabeth’s reign by Nicholas Heath, the Archbi-
shop of York, in which he described the queen in both male and female terms as “our sovaraigne
lord and ladie, our kinge and queen, our emperor and empresse.”6 Frye, on the other hand, notes
that in a speech composed by Elizabeth and her Privy Council in 1569, intended to be read in parish

2Susan Frye, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993),
12.

3 Queen Elizabeth’s First Speech at Hatfield, 20 November 1558 in: Elizabeth I, Collected Works, ed. Leah S. Marcus,
Janel Mueller and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 51. The manuscript in
The National Archives, London: PRO, State Papers Domestic Elizabeth SP/12/1, 7.

4 Marie Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (London: Royal Historical Society,
1977), 27. The queen herself expressed it as follows: “thowghe I be a woman yet I have as good a corage answerable to
mye place as evere my father hade. I am your anointed Queene. I wyll never be by vyolence constreyned to doo anye
thinge.” Elizabeth’s Response to a Parliamentary Delegation on Her Marriage, 1566, in Proceedings in the Parlia-
ments of Elizabeth I, ed. T. E. Hartley, vol. 1, (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1981), 44–45.

5I quote from an undated manuscript at The British Library, Harley 6798, f. 87. The authenticity of this speech is qu-
estioned by some historians as it was first recorded circa 1623 by Dr. Leonel Sharp in a letter to Duke Buckingham.
However, the existence of the aforementioned manuscript seems to strengthen its credibility. Miller Christy, “Queen
Elizabeth’s Visit to Tilbury in 1588,” English Historical Review 34 (1919): 43–61; Felix Barker, “If Parma Had
Landed,” History Today 38 (May 1988), 38; Susan Frye, “The Myth of Elizabeth of Tilbury,” Sixteenth Century Journal
23 (1992): 95–114.

6 Hethe, Archebishoppe of Yorke, his oration made in the Parliament House, 1559, in An Appendix being a Repository
of Faithful Extracts of Various Records and Registers…, ed. John Strype (London: John Wyat, 1708), 7. See also Carol
Levin, The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power (Philadelphia: The University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 121.
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churches, the queen was referred to as “the sovereign prince and queen.”7 It is also worth mentio-
ning the queen’s answer to the House of Commons petition of 1563:

The weight and greatness of this matter might cause in me, being woman wanting both wit
and memory, some fear to speak and bashfulness besides, a thing appropriate to my sex. But
yet the princely seat and kingly throne wherein God (though unworthy) hath constituted me,
maketh these two causes to seem little in mine eyes.8

According to the queen’s interpretation, the same issue may be viewed as momentous (by a woman)
and trivial (by a king); it might indeed be regarded as Elizabeth’s own version of the royal obliga-
tion to be both Pater et filius Iustitiae: father and son of Justice. In her female body natural the qu-
een could present herself as intimidated by the burden of state affairs, but her royal (and presumably
male) body politic elevated her above such limitations.

However, the idea of the king’s two bodies could also be interpreted quite differently. For
the jurists of the Inns of Court it was perceived as a means of limiting and controlling the queen. As
Marie Axton has convincingly argued, the jurist Edmund Plowden’s famous Reports of 1571, which
codified the concept of the king’s two bodies in the early modern period, were designed to ‘minimi-
se the personal impact of the new sovereign and (…) emphasise the continuity of the monarchy.’9
The jurists of the Inns of Court were keen to emphasise the impersonal character of the body politic
by undermining the importance of the body natural. They determined that when a king acceded to
the throne he must renounce his personal privileges and properties, and give up the right to make
decisions dictated by personal preference; it was expected that a king would relinquish his life as a
private man. If Elizabeth believed that her natural body was protected and reinforced by the body
politic, the jurists, on the contrary, claimed that the queen’s person was subordinated to the body
politic.
Although they drew opposing conclusions, the queen and her jurists used the concept of the
two bodies to suggest that the queen’s person had, to some extent, been incorporated into the body
politic.10 On the other hand, several observers noted a distinction between Elizabeth’s physical and

7 Frye, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation, 13.

8 PRO, State Papers Domestic, Elizabeth 12/27/36, fol. 143r–44r. See Elizabeth I, Collected Works, 70.

9 Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies, 16.

10 Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 364–83.

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political bodies. The courtier and poet Edward Dyer wrote to Lord Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hat-
ton, ‘First of all you must consider with whom you have to deale, & what wee be towards her, who
though she does descend uery much in her Sex as a woman, yet wee may not forgett her Place, &
the nature of it as our Sovraigne’.11 The jurists of the Inns of Court stressed the dichotomy of the
king’s body to point out the discrepancy between Elizabeth’s body politic and body natural.12 Fema-
le gender was perceived as weakness, therefore a woman-ruler was supposed to rely on the wisdom
of her male counsellors.13 This conviction was expressed clearly in a passage from The Mirror for
Magistrates written during the reign of Mary Tudor:

As for wysedome and pollicie, seing it consiseth in folowing the counsayl of many godly, le-
arned, & long experienced heades, it were better to have a woman, who cosideringe her owne
weaknes and inabilitye, shoulde be ruled thereby, than a man presuming upon his owne bray-
ne, wil heare no advise save his owne. 14

It was necessary for the queen’s to establish that her authority as a ruler was not subjected to femi-
nine weakness. Elizabeth’s political situation, however, was further complicated by her excommu-
nication by Pius V in 1570, by which the pope and catholic bishops absolved her subjects from alle-
giance to her.15 Cardinal William Allen went so far as to issue the Admonition to the Nobility and
People of England and Ireland Concerning the Present Warres in which he urged English Catholics
to overthrow the queen. He thundered against a woman being a head of the church: ‘She usurpeth,
by Luciferian pride, the title of supreme ecclesiastical government, a thing in a woman unheard

11Edward Dyer to Christopher Hatton, 9 October 1572, The British Library, Add. 12 520, f. 85b. Quoted in Ralph M.
Sargent, At the Court of Queen Elizabeth: The Life and Lyrics of Sir Edward Dyer (New York: Oxford University Press,
1935), 24.

12 Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies, 11–25.

13Louis Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2006), 45.

14 The Mirror for Magistrates, ed. Lily Campbell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938), 318. See also Ka-
therine Eggert, Showing Like a Queen: Female Authority and Literary Experiment in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 1–21.

15 Pius V, Regnans in excelsis in: John Jewel, Works, ed. John Ayre, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1850), 1131–32: “This very woman having seazed on the Kingdome, and monstrously usurping the place of supreme
head of the Church in all England, and the chiefe authority and jurisdiction thereof, hath againe brought backe the sayd
Kingdome into miserable destruction, which was then newly reduced to the Catholike Faith and good fruits… We do
declare Her to be deprived of her pretended Title to the Kingdome aforesayd, and of all Dominion, Dignity, and Privi-
ledge what soever; and also the Nobility, Subjects, and People of the sayd Kingdome, and all others which have in any
sort sworne unto Her, to be for ever absolved from any such Oath, and all manner of duty of dominion, allegiance, and
obedience.”
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of.’16 He also accused her of debauchery, suggesting that she ‘hath abused her bodie against God’s
lawes, to the disgrace of princely majestie, and the whole nation reproche, by unspeakable and in-
credible variety of luste;’17 and by mentioning that she disgraced ‘her princely majestie,’18 he em-
phasised the clash between the queen’s body natural and her body politic. Although his references
are negative, he nonetheless confirmed that the theory of two bodies was an essential element of
Elizabethan political discourse.19
However it was not merely Catholics who were anxious about the fact that a woman sat on
the English throne. In 1558, shortly before Elizabeth’s accession, John Knox, a Scottish theologian
and a leader of the Protestant Reformation, published the evocatively-titled pamphlet The First Bla-
st of the Trumpet against the Monstruous Regiment of Women. Inspired by the unfortunate rule of
Elizabeth’s step-sister, Mary I, it used religious grounds as the basis for an attack on the rule of
women. Knox wrote: ‘To promote a woman to beare rule (…) is repugnant to nature, contumelie to
God, a thing most contrarious to his reueled will and approued ordinance, and finallie it is the subu-
ersion of good order, of all equitie and iustice.’20 In the margin he added: ‘Common welthes under
the rule of women, lacke a laufull heade.’21 Regardless of her faith and birth, Elizabeth’s claim to
the throne was inconsistent with divine law simply because she was a woman. The social hierarchy
in which woman was subordinated to man was an indispensable part of the ‘natural order’ of the
world, itself a reflection of the cosmic order established by God.

16An Admonition to the Nobility and People of England and Ireland Concerninge the Present Warres Made for the Ex-
ecution of his Holines Sentence … by the Cardinal of Englande, [Antwerp: A. Coninncx], A[nn]o. M.D.LXXXVIII.
[1588]. See also The Image and Perception of Monarchy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. Sean McGlynn,
Elena Woodacre (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 218.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 The significance of this text was further complicated by the circumstances in which it was issued. Allen, a longtime
opponent of the queen and a staunch supporter of the re-conversion of England to Catholicism, was appointed a cardinal
at the recommendation of King Philip II of Spain in 1587 and his Admonition was published in 1588, just before the
Spanish invasion. Urging Catholics to rise up against Elizabeth, he acted with the intention to facilitate Philip II to co-
nquer England.

20The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (London: John Day, 1558). Rpt. in The
Works of John Knox, ed. David Laing, vol. 4 (Edinburgh: James Thin, 1895), 373.

21 Knox, First blast, 390.

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 Knox’s position was not universally accepted. A few months after the succession another
protestant theologian, John Aylmer, published a reply to Knox’s pamphlet.22 Aylmer’s An Harboro-
vve for a Faithfull and Trewe Subiectes proclaimed the queen a safe harbour for the English people
after the stormy reign of Mary. He refutes the allegation that the rule of women is unnatural by ar-
guing that their authority, like the authority of men, comes ultimately from God: ‘when God cho-
oseth himself by sending to a king, whose succession is ruled by inheritance and lineal descent, no
heirs male: it is a plain argument that for some secret purpose he mindeth the female should reign
and govern.’23 He further argues that God established rulers to ensure the welfare of the common-
wealth, therefore if the reign of a woman is prosperous, it cannot be contrary to the will of God.
And yet, he added: ‘It is not she that ruleth, but the laws.’24 Such vacillation continued throughout
Elizabeth’s reign. In 1597 a French ambassador noted: ‘Her government is fairly pleasing to the pe-
ople, who show that they love her, but it is little pleasing to the great men and nobles; and if by any
chance she should die, it is certain that the English would never again submit to the rule of
woman.’25
The most troubling consequence of having an unmarried women on the throne seemed to be
the question of succession, and a considerable part of Elizabeth’s reign was marked by strenuous
attempts to persuade her to choose a husband. Yet even though a marriage might have strengthened
her political position and secured the succession, the queen decided not to marry. This controversial
choice, which may have been a conscious decision,26 or perhaps the result of ‘Elizabeth’s policy of

22Possibly it was inspired by the court, given that his book was dedicated to two members of the Privy Council: Clark
Hulse, Elizabeth I: Ruler and Legend (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 42.

23John Aylmer, An Harborovve for a Faithfull and Trevve Subiectes … (Strasbourg [i.e. London]: John Day, 1559) fol.
B3 v; A. N. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth, 1558–1585 (Cambrid-
ge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 59–69.

24 Aylmer, An Harborowe, fol. H3 r; McLaren, Political Culture in The Reign of Elizabeth I, 46–74.

25A Journal of All that Was Accomplished by Monsieur de Maisse, Ambassador in England from King Henry IV to Qu-
een Elizabeth, A. D. 1597, trans. and ed. by G. B. Harrison (London: The Nonesuch Press, 1931), 11–12.

26 The queen’s conscious will of remaining a virgin married to her kingdom was expressed in her alleged response to a
1559 petition from the House of Commons: “As concerning yours instant perswasion of mee to marriage, I must tell
you … I am already bound unto an Husband, which is the Kingdome of England … And reproach mee so no more, that
I haue no children: for euery one of you, and as man as are English, are my Children.” The speech was quoted by Eliza-
beth’s first historian, William Camden in Annales the True and Royall History of the Famous Empresse Elizabeth Qu-
eene of England … (London: Printed [by George Purslowe, Humphrey Lownes, and Miles Flesher] for Beniamin Fi-
sher, 1625), 27–28. A draft version of the speech preserved in the British Library (MS Lansdowne 94) does not mention
the queen married to her realm. John K. King suggests that it might have been added later as a “hagiographical” embel-
lishment: John N. King, “Queen Elizabeth I: Representations of the Virgin Queen,” Renaissance Quarterly 43, no. 1
(Spring 1990): 30–74.
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prolonged non-decision,’27 posed another challenge for her rule. Her decisive approach, however, is
noted by the French ambassador in 1566: ‘As for handling the succession, no one of them [queen's
subjects] should do it; she would reserve that for herself … Nor had she the slightest wish for their
counsel on this subject.’28 Advice, of course, was offered in disguised form. The Spanish ambassa-
dor, De Silva, was present at the Gray’s Inn entertainment at Whitehall on 5 March 1565 and noted:
‘we (…) descended to where all was prepared for the representation of a comedy in English, of
which I understood as much as the Queen told me. The plot was founded on the question of marria-
ge, discussed between Juno and Diana, Juno advocating marriage and Diana chastity. Jupiter gave
verdict in favour of matrimony (…) The Queen turned to me and said, “This is all against me.”’29
As the queen grew older and the chances of securing the succession decreased, the public persona
of a virgin goddess was reluctantly accepted;30 the perceived weakness of an unmarried woman
unable to give the kingdom an heir was transformed into the triumphant image of the Virgin Queen.
However we must bear in mind that this image was fashioned dynamically, as John N. King argues,
and was to a certain extent created posthumously, in the Jacobean era, as a leverage against Stuart
politics.31
Marie Axton in The Queen’s Two Bodies accurately states that ‘the land of the realm was
vested in the king,’32 and Bishop Stephen Gardiner, advisor to Elizabeth’s father Henry VIII, asser-
ted that the king was ‘the ymage of God upon earth.’33 These two statements articulate the nature of
kingship: its two essential elements were its corporate character and its sacred nature. In the Tudor
era, a ruler – the head of both commonwealth and church – combined secular and religious authori-

27 Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies, 63.

28 Jean de La Forêt, a letter to Charles IX, 21 October 1566. Quoted in: Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies, 11.

29Calendar of State Papers, Spain, vol. 1 1558–1567, ed. Martin A.S. Hume (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office,
1892), 404–405. Quoted in: Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies, 49.

30 Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies, 60.

31 King, Queen Elizabeth I: Representations of the Virgin Queen, 30–74.

32 Ibid. 14.

33Stephen Gardiner, De vera obedientia. An Oration … by … Stepha[n] Bishop of Wi[n]chestre … Printed at

Ha[m]burgh in Latine, in Officina Fra[n]cisci Rhodi Mense Ianuario, 1536. And Now Translated in to Englishe
(Rome[?]: 1553). Both Lation’s original and the sixteenth-century translation are reprinted as: Stephen Gardiner, The
Oration of True Obedience, in Stephen Gardiner, Obedience in Church and State: Three Political Tracts by Stephen
Gardiner, transl. and ed. by Pierre Janelle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), 97.
!7
ty. Elizabeth relied heavily on both, and her public appearances were designed to present her as
both godly monarch and an embodiment of her subjects’ expectations.34
This triumphant image was popularised by panegyrists. John Awdelay in his poem The
Wonders of England (1559) compared the Elizabethan succession with a lamp being lit in the dark-
ness and he suggested that the very voice of God commanded Elizabeth to reign:

“Up,” said this God with voice not strange,

“Elizabeth, thys real newe guyde,
My Wyll in thee do not thou hyde.”35

Richard Mulcaster praised the queen in a ballad:

The God sent us your noble Grace,

as in dede it was highe tyme,
Which dothe all Popery cleane deface,
and set us forth God’s trewe devine —
For whome we are all bound to praye, Lady, Lady.
Long life to raigne both night and day, most dere Ladye.36

Such praises are sometimes interpreted as evidence of the existence of the cult of Elizabeth,
who was described and depicted in a manner reminiscent of the Virgin Mary.37 Scholars such as E.
C. Wilson, Frances A. Yates, and Roy Strong, argue in favour of such a hypothesis; more recent

34 Foxe’s The Actes and Monuments of the Christian Church was of a great significance in these efforts. Foxe’s book
first published in English in 1563 (London: John Day), was very influential and had further expanded editions in 1570,
1576, and 1583, with subsequent editions in 1596, 1610, 1625, and 1632. It included a detailed account of her impri-
sonment in the Tower granting her status of a religious martyr. Elizabeth Evenden, Thomas S. Freeman, Religion and
the Book in Early Modern England: The Making of John Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs” (Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 2011).

35 John Awdelay, The Wonders of England[e], (London : By John Awdeley, 1559). Quoted in Wilson, England’s Eliza,
8.

36
The Harleian Miscellany: A Collection of … Pamphlets and Tracts, ed. Thomas Park, vol. 10 (London: Printed for J.
White, 1813), 263.

37 See Helen Hackett, Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: St. Mar-
tin’s Press, 1995).
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work of Sydney Anglo, Susan Doran, and Susan Frye has been more critical.38 Louis A. Montrose
has suggested that the cult of Elizabeth was ‘a complex core component of Elizabethan statecraft.’39
The account of Polish envoy Paweł Działyński sheds some light on this intricate problem.
Działyński came to England in 1597, sent by the Polish king Sigismund III Vasa with a sharp di-
plomatic note concerning Baltic maritime trade. He wrote, ‘upon our arrival in England, we careful-
ly and thoroughly observed the condition of the kingdom and the Queen herself, which at first glan-
ce propels the greatest delight.’40 But his assessment soon darkens. He states: ‘The Queen is sixty-
four, and she rules for forty years with unheard-of despotism in which she hitherto surpassed all the
tyrants,’ and he refers to the queen as ‘the Pope hermaphrodite’ and ‘dangerous predator-woman.’41
He praises her for possessing ‘the prudence of Semiramis, forethought of Brutus, astuteness of
Odysseus’ only to emphasise further how truly dangerous she is. He was particularly critical of the
court customs, which found blasphemous:

The Englishmen (…) either intoxicated with the fume of her [the queen] crimes, or apparen-
tly compelled by force and cruelty, do not hesitate to bring the adulations to her bedroom
and present her with them during the audiences, especially when they kneel and worship
their ludicrous pontiff, when their long-haired priest raises her hand in a salute, when they
bow their heads as if to accept the blessing, when they solemnly celebrate the anniversary of
queen’s birthday and her coronation day, when they elevate her over Holy Virgin Mary,
when they compare her to Christ and (I dread to say) call her Redemptrix, because as Christ
redeemed the human race, so she saved His Church through reformation.42

Działyński’s account is far from objective: during an audience in Greenwich he gave an audacious
speech which offended the queen and caused a diplomatic scandal that might have even lead to war.

38E.C. Wilson (England’s Eliza, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938); Frances A. Yates (Astraea: The
Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975); Roy Strong (The Cult of Elizabeth:
Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry, University of California Press, 1977); Sydney Anglo (Images of the Tudor
Kingship, London: Seaby,1992); Susan Doran (Virginity, Divinity and Power: The Portraits of Elizabeth I), Susan Frye
(The Competition for Representation, New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Stephen Hamrick (The Ca-
tholic Imaginary and the Cults of Elizabeth, 1558–1582, Farnham: Ashgate, 2009).

39 Montrose, Subject of Elizabeth, 104, 113.

40Mercurius Sarmaticus ex Belgio Anglicus sive Succincta er circumstantialis narratio ambarum in Belgiam et Angliam
legationum, … induit et exuit Paulus Dzialinski Anno Domini M.D.X.C.VII. The master copy of a manuscript in the
Kórnik Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences, sig. BK 01541, fol. 28–33v.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.
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His written account was thus an attempt to justify his mission, and he had no reason to present the
queen, nor her court, favourably. He may also have been biased by the hostile opinions proclaimed
by the queen’s opponents. It is also doubtful whether he was able to understand fully the customs of
the English court after only a month. Yet there may be some truth behind his spiteful criticism, whi-
ch would support idea that a cult of Elizabeth existed during her reign.

STAGECRAFT AND STATECRAFT

Whether or not there was a genuine ‘cult’ of Elizabeth, the fact remains that the queen presented
herself to the public in a theatrical manner, using costumes, jewellery, accessories, make-up, wigs,
and suitable scenery.43 Her elaborate mode of dress may have been intended to suggest no mere
mortal, but a deity in human form.44 John Hayward, in his account of the coronation procession of
1559, noted that the queen spared no expense ‘knowing right well that in pompous ceremonies a
secret of government doth much consist, for the people are both taken and held with exteriour she-
wes … The rich attire, the ornaments, the beauty of Laydies, did add particular graces to the solem-
nity, and held eyes and hearts of men dazeled betweene contentment and admiratione.’45 Such per-
formances were an indispensable element of early modern governance: Elizabeth demonstrated both
her own power and the might of kingship by drawing upon the theatricality of court ceremonies.46
Performance was an indispensable element of early modern governance: statecraft could not do wi-
thout stagecraft.47

43Syndey Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); Mary Hill Cole, The
Portable Queen: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Ceremony (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999); Nadia
Thérèse Van Pelt, Enter Queen: Metatheatricality and The Monarch On/Off Stage, in: The Image and Perception of
Monarchy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. Sean McGlynn and Elena Woodacre (Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 298–318; Alice Hunt, Drama of Coronation: Medieval Ceremony in Early Mo-
dern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1–11. Cassandra Auble, Bejeweled Majesty: Queen Eli-
zabeth I, Precious Stones, and Statecraft, in: The Emblematic Queen: Extra-Literary Representations of Early Modern
Queenship, ed. Debra Barrett-Graves (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 35.

44 See Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d (Leeds: W. S. Maney and Son, 1988).

45John Hayward, Annals of the First Four Years of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. John Bruce, vol. 7 (London: The
Camden Society, 1840), 15.

46 See Paul Raffield, Law and the Equivocal Image: Sacred and Profane in Royal Portraiture, in: Visualizing Law and
Authority : Essays on Legal Eesthetics. Law and Literature (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 51–73; and Ronnie Mirkin, Per-
forming Selfhood: The Costumed Body as a Site of Mediation Between Life, Art and the Theatre in the English Renais-
sance, in Body Dressing, eds. Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 143–63.

47 See Ronnie Mirkin, Performing Selfhood: The Costumed Body as a Site of Mediation Between Life, Art and the The-
atre in the English Renaissance, in Body Dressing, eds. Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson (Oxford: Berg, 2001),
143–163.
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 Public ceremonies were intended as a means of building royal authority, as Thomas Elyot
notes in The Boke Named the Governour: ‘christen kynges (all though they by inheritaunce succe-
eded their progenitours kynges) shulde in an open and stately place before all their subjects, receyue
their crowne and other Regalities’ in order to impress the beholders and inspire them with ‘perpetu-
all reuerence, whiche … is fountayne of obedience.’48 In other words, the ceremony was designed
to make visible the character angelicus of the ruler.49 According to Elyot, this way of presenting the
royal image was arose from the imperfections of human perception: ‘Lette it be also considered that
we be men and nat aungels, wherefore we knowe nothinge but by outwarde signification.’50 As the
body politic was invisible, royal subjects could perceive it only through the physical body of the
ruler. It was thus necessary to communicate the character angelicus through ‘some exterior signe,’
such as ‘excellencie in vesture, or other thinge semblable.’51 For Elyot, apparel was particularly su-
ited to such purpose, and lavish displays were not an end in themselves, but rather a visible sign of
God’s power. When subjects ‘honour the Princes throne, sceptre, seal, swoord, token or Image,
[they] honour not the thinges which they see, but the power that sent them.’52 By showing reverence
to their kings, subjects were also expressing their devotion to the God represented by their sovere-
ign.
The notion that Elizabeth’s public appearances were conscious performances is suggested in
a speech she gave in 1586: ‘We princes, I tel you, are set on stages, in the sight and viewe of all the
world duly observed; the eyes of many behold our actions; a spot is soon spied in our garments; a
blemish noted quickly in our doings.’53 She understood that royal power had to be convincingly
staged in order to be plausible. The queen proved skilful in arcana imperii, the mysteries of state,54

48Thomas Elyot, The Boke Named the Governour (London: Imprinted in the house of Thomas Berthelet, 1531), 173.
The first of the treatise was dedicated to Henry VIII.

49 Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 8; Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship, 9.

50 Elyot, The Boke Named the Governour, 173.

51 Ibid.

52 Thomas Bilson, The True Difference Betweene Christian Subjection and Unchristian Rebellion (London: Ioseph Bar-
nes, printer to the uniuersitie, 1585), 560. Sydney Anglo interprets Blison’s thought as a way to defend royal images
from accusation of idolatry: Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship, 16.

53 AReport of her Majestie’s most Gratious Answere … to the first Petitions of the Lords and Commons . . . the xii Day
of November 1586, in Walter Scott ed., A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts, vol. 1 (London: T. Cordeil and W.
Davies, 1809), 220.

54 Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth, 229.

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and soon demonstrated that the illusion of power as staged with costumes and gestures were, in
practice, inseparable from actual power.55
Since the body natural of the queen was supposed to represent the body politic, its qualities
and appearance became all the more important. Contemporary eyewitness accounts often emphasi-
sed exceptional personal qualities of the queen, both those traditionally linked with femininity (be-
auty) and masculinity (knowledge and intellect), as a means of presenting a gender duality.56 In a
number of written accounts, the queen’s alluring appearance was related directly to her ‘princely’
majesty:

[S]he was of personage tall, of hair and complexion fair, and therewith well favoured; … of
limbs and feature neat, and, which added to the lustre of those exterior graces, of stately and
majestic comportment; participating in this more of her father than her mother, who was of
an inferior allay, plausible, or, as the French hath it, more debonaire, and affable, virtues
which might suit well with majesty, and which descending, as hereditary to the daughter, did
render her of a more sweeter temper and endeared her more to the love and liking of her pe-
ople, who gave her the name and fame of a most gracious and popular Prince.57

And elsewhere we read:

[S]he was a Lady of Great Beauty, of a Decent Stature, and of an Excellent Shape; … her
skin was of pure white, and her hair of a yellow colour; her Eyes were beautiful and lively.
In short, her whole Body was well made, and her Face was adorned with a wonderful and
sweet Beauty and Majesty.58

The queen’s beauty was not just a personal attribute, but rather an element of the official do-
ctrine of the kingdom; much like her right to rule, her beauty was derived directly from God. The
queen’s subjects were thus bound to reverence and admiration, just as they were bound to obedien-

55 Clifford Geertz went so far as to conclude that such a way of establishing royal power demonstrated “the very thing
that the elaborate mystique of court ceremonial is supposed to conceal — that majesty is made, not born.” Clifford Ge-
ertz, Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power, in: Local Knowledge: Further Essays in
Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 124–25.

56 Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth, 316; Paul Johnson, Elizabeth I: A Study in Power and Intellect (London: Weiden-
feld&Nicholson, 1974); Linda Shenk, Learned Queen: The Image of Elizabeth I in Politic and Poetry (New York: Pal-
grave Macmillian, 2010).

Robert Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia (Edinburgh: Printed by James Ballantyne for Archibald Constable and John
57
Murray, 1808), 175.

58 The Character of Queen Elizabeth ... by Edmund Bohun (London: Printed for Ric. Chiswell, 1693), 301–302.
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ce.59 ’It is her Beauty onely creates her Queen; this which adds a commanding power to every syl-
lable … Her body doth represent those Fields of peace that poets sing of in Elizium … Beauty is the
Image of the creator, and the Rhetorick of Heaven (…) a divinity left on earth, to be known and be-
loved of mortals.’60
Elizabeth’s beauty was God’s blessing, and a visible sign of his protection over her sacred
right to rule. It reflected God’s perfection and was an aesthetic reflection of her virtues. Sir Richard
Baker reminisced her as being ‘of admirable beauty; but the beauty of her mind was far more admi-
rable … She had more Valour in her than was fit for a woman, but that she was Ruler over men; and
more Humility in her than was fit for a Prince, but that she meant to be a President to women.’61
Her beauty, whose idealised image was established by portraiture, represented ‘the very excess’ of
the queen’s ‘sacred life … isolated in the image.’62
Over time the queen’s imperishable beauty, resistant to the destructive effects of time, be-
came an essential element of her public performance, sustaining the illusion that the body politic
overcame the weaknesses of her body natural and granted it immortality. Thomas Platter, a young
Swiss traveller who had the opportunity to see the queen in late 1590s, observed that: ‘she was most
gorgeously apparelled, and although she was already seventy-four [she was actually sixty-six at the
time], was very youthful still in appearance, seeming no more than twenty years of age.’63 The
French ambassador echoes these compliments in his account of an audience with the queen in 1597,
stating that ‘When anyone speaks of her beauty she says that she was never beautiful, although she
had that reputation thirty years ago. Nevertheless she speaks of her beauty as often as she can. As

59 See also an account of Elizabeth by Sir James Melville, an emissary from the court of Mary Queen of Scots, written
in 1564: Memoirs of his own Life by Sir James Melville of Halhill (Edinburgh: The Bannatyne Club, 1827), 123–24.
Melville’s evidence in general is sometimes being questioned as not very reliable: Tricia A. McElroy, A „Little Paren-
thesis” to History: The Memoirs of sir James Melville of Halhill, in The Apparelling of Truth: Literature and Literary
Culture in the Reign of James I, eds. Kevin J. McGinley, Nicola Royan (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), 148–
61.

60The Academy of Complements … (London: Tho[mas] Leach and Tho[mas] Child, 1663) 25–6. See Bertelli, The
King’s Body, 169.

61 See Sir Richard Baker, A Chronicle of the Kings of England from the Time of the Romans Government unto the Death
of King James (London: Printed for George Sawbridge, 1670), 420.

62Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, transl. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1998), 101.

63 Thomas Platter’s Travels in England, 1599, transl. and ed. Clare Williams (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937), 192.
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for her natural form and proportion, she is very beautiful,’64 although elsewhere he observed that
‘her face … appears to be very aged.’65
The queen’s attire and hairstyle accentuated her unmarried state. She preferred styles rese-
rved for young, unmarried women, such as a low neckline and hair worn loose.66 But mainly she
chose richly decorated garments and exquisite jewellery hoping they would add to her beauty, or at
least distract from her shortcomings, such as wrinkles, smallpox scars or tooth decay. John Clapham
noticed in his Certain Observations Concerning the Life and Reign of Queen Elizabeth that ‘in her
latter time, when she showed herself in public, she was always magnificent in apparel, supposing
haply thereby, that the eyes of her people, being dazzled with the glittering aspect of those acciden-
tal ornaments would not so easily discern the marks of age and decay of natural beauty.’67 This ob-
servation is echoed by Sir Francis Bacon who wrote: ‘she imagined that the people, who are much
influenced by externals, would be diverted, by the glitter of jewels, from noticing the decay of her
personal attractions.’68 They both evoke a theatrical air, suggesting that Elizabeth played the role of
a beautiful and magnificent queen even when she was close to death.
It would be wrong to think that this was merely vanity. By presenting herself as ageless and
ever-beautiful she reassured both her subjects and her enemies that she was still capable of ruling.69
John Clapham in his memoirs written soon after the queen’s death noted: ‘she would often show
herself … at public spectacles (even against her own liking) to no other end but that the people mi-
ght the better perceive her ability of body and good disposition, which otherwise in respect of her
years they might perhaps have doubted.’70 Both Susan Frye and Susan Doran link her strategy of
self-representation to concerns about the unresolved matter of succession,71 and it is possible that

64 A Journal of All that Was Accomplished by Monsieur de Maisse, 38.

65 Ibid., 25.

66
Maria Hayward, Dressed to Impress, in Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, eds. Alice Hunt, Anna
Whitelock (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 85.

67 Elizabeth of England: Certain Observations Concerning the Life and Reign of Queen Elizabeth by John Clapham,
eds. Evelyn Plummer Read, Conyers Read (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1951), 86. The manuscript
in the British Library, Add. MS. 22, 925.

68William Hickman Smith Aubrey, The National and Domestic History of England, vol. 2 (London: James Hagger:
1879), 758–59.

69 Louis Montrose suggests that the prosperity and strength of the kingdom seem “mystically dependent upon the
strength and integrity … of the Queen’s body natural.” Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth, 147.

70 Elizabeth of England: Certain Observations, 86.

71 Frye, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation, 107. Susan Doran, Virginity, Divinity and Power, 189.
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Elizabeth wanted to distance herself from anything that prompted the thought of her old age and
approaching death. There are several court anecdotes about the queen’s alleged aversion to mirrors
in her later years.72 Henry Chettle confessed: ‘I have heard it credibly reported … that shee never
could abide to gaze in a mirrour or looking-glasse … I have seene the Ladies make great shift to
hide away their looking-glasses if her Majestie had past by their lodgings.’73 Instead, she surroun-
ded herself with portraits that functioned as magic mirrors reflecting her beautified, flawless image.
Her self-presentation in the 1590s was intended to create the impression that she ‘is utterly void of
… old Age, and other natural Defects,’74 a queen who never dies.
The last decade of her reign, sometimes called ‘the second reign of Elizabeth I,’75 was full
of political unrest and economic discontent, reaching its climax with the rebellion and execution of
the Earl of Essex in 1601. The queen’s popularity had faded considerably, and while her last years
were marked by bitterness, the legend of her glorious reign would survive long after her death.

II. REPRESENTATION

The first known portrait of Elizabeth I as a queen is probably the Clopton Portrait (ca. 1560) pain-
ted by an unknown artist of the English school. It depicts the queen in her twenties, soon after co-
ming to power.76 It is a rare example of an early portrait which immortalises her earthly beauty in
the brief period before she reinvented herself as a goddess. Although the queen is elaborately dres-
sed in black and white (the colours of the house of Tudor) and bejewelled, she does not resemble
the figured found in later portraits; here she is presented not a powerful ruler but as a privileged
young woman. The Gripsholm Portrait (ca. 1563), sent to Eric XIV of Sweden as a part of matri-
monial negotiations, displays similar features. The anonymous painter here portrayed the queen as a

72 Louis A. Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth, 247.

73 Henry Chettle, Englands Mourning Garment …; in Memorie of their Sacred Mistresse, Elizabeth (London: [E. Short]
for Thomas Millington, 1603), sig. Er. John Clapham wrote: “not long before her death, [she] had a great … declination
by seeing her face, then lean and full of wrinkles, truly represented to her in a glass” (96); This subject is repeated and
further developed in the seventeenth-century anecdotes. In The Character of Queen Elizabeth it is noted that: “If she
hapned by accident to cast her eye upon a true Loooking-glass, she would be strangely transported and offended, becau-
se it did not still shew her what she had been,” (301–302); Louis Montrose, Elizabeth through the Looking Glass: Pictu-
ring the Queen’s Two Bodies, in: The Body of the Queen: Gender and Rule in the Courtly World, 1500–2000, ed. Regina
Schulte (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 78–9; Catherine Loomis, Catherine Loomis, The Death of Elizabeth I:
Remembering and Reconstructing the Virgin Queen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 92–3.

74 Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 7.

75 Montrose, Elizabeth through the Looking Glass, 70.

76 Sir Roy Strong, Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (London: Thames & Hudson, 1987), 58–9.
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prospective wife, young and beautiful in her scarlet velvet and cloth of gold.77 The painting offers a
glimpse of Elizabeth at a time when she was still considering the idea of marriage, a radiant and
modest bride-to-be, miles away from the future sacred majesty. These early portraits are strikingly
different from the intricate portraits of her later years. Absent are the mythological allusions, attri-
butes of divinity and elaborate allegories. They represent the queen’s body natural, rather than her
body politic.78
The manner of portraying the queen may have changed in or shortly after 1563. Amongst
the State Papers there is a draft proclamation from that year relating to the process of royal portra-
iture, which states: ‘Forasmuch as through the natural desire that all sorts of subjects and people,
both noble and mean, have to procure the Portrait and Picture of the Queen’s Majestie, great nom-
ber of Painters, and some Printers and Gravers, have already, and do daily attempt to make in divers
maners portraietures of her Majestie … wherein is evidently shown that hytherto none hath suffi-
ciently expressed the naturall representation of her Majestie’s person, favor, or grace.’79 The proc-
lamation deplored ‘the errors and deformities allready committed’ by unskilled artists.80 Given the
disappointing state of royal portraiture, the proclamation suggested finding an artist able to create a
satisfying portrait of the queen, which would later serve as a model for other painters: ‘some special
person that shall be by her allowed shall have first finished a pourtraicture thereof, after which fyni-
shed, hir Majestie will be content that all other painters, printers, or gravers (…) shall and may at
their pleasures follow the said pattern (…) to be participated to others for satisfaction of her loving
subjects.’81 Until that time, the proclamation prohibited ‘all manner of other persons to draw, paynt,

77 See Hayward, Dressed to Impress, 84.

78 See Montrose, Elizabeth through the Looking Glass, 68–9.

79 The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, ed. John Nichols, vol. 1 (London 1823: John Nichols and
Son), XII–XIV. The manuscript in the National Archives, London: P.R.O., State Papers 12/32, no. 25. The draft was
corrected by William Cecil himself: Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship, 116. The fact that the queen’s portraits did not
accurately reflect her appearance is confirmed by the anecdote of 1571 when Elizabeth’s portrait was sent to France to
the duke of Alençon. Seeing it, Catherine de Medici reportedly said: “After what everyone tell me of her beauty, and
after the paintings that I have seen, I must declare that she did not have good painters.” See Anna Riehl, The Face of
Queenship. Early Modern Representations of Elizabeth I (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 48.

80The proclamation reads: “hir Majestie perceiveth that a grete nombre of hir loving subjects are much greved and take
great offence with the errors and deformities allready committed … , and in the mean tyme to forbydd and prohibit the
shewing or publication of such as are apparently deformed, until they may be reformed which are reformable.” The
Progresses and Public Processions, XIV–XV. It is not sure whether those disappointing portraits were actually destroy-
ed or some of them are the images that have survived to our times. Elizabeth Pomeroy recall Walter Raleigh’s mention
that many were cast to fire in 1596, after the second proclamation concerning images: Elizabeth W. Pomeroy, Reading
the Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I. (Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1989), 17.

81 The Progresses and Public Processions, XIV–XV.

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grave, or pourtrayit her Majestie’s personage or visage for a tyme, untill by some perfect pattern
and example the same may be by others followed.’82
We do not know if this proclamation ever came into effect, but even if it did not, the infor-
mation concerning ‘the mechanics of Tudor state portraiture’83 is most instructive. It also provides
evidence that the dissemination of royal likenesses was a matter of serious concern for the queen
and her advisers. The proclamation may have been an attempt to develop a mechanism of control
governing the creation and circulation of royal images. It seems evident that the queen sought to
influence the manner in which she was represented, and, consequently, perceived by her subjects.84
However her efforts to exercise control over portraiture were not carried out systematically and met
with limited success.85 The queen did not manage to establish an effective system of production, nor
a firm royal patronage, nor even the kind of governmental censorship that existed for drama and
printed books.86 There was no ‘official’ court painter responsible for shaping the queen’s public
image in the manner that Van Dyck created the image of Charles I. Instead, royal portraits were
commissioned by different agents, primarily by the queen, but also by her courtiers, or affluent in-
dividuals, as well as writers or printers of illustrated books.87
The public image of the queen was communicated through a variety of media accessible to
different social classes.88 Among court officials and the aristocracy, the queen’s images were ava-
ilable as life-size oil-painting or precious, jewelled miniatures. Subjects of lower standing had ac-
cess to the smaller versions on official court documents, as well as woodcuts and engravings se-
rving as frontispieces and book illustrations, medals, and seals (which due to their ephemeral nature
have mostly not survived to the present day). The poorest only saw the face of their queen engraved

82 Ibid.

83 Roy C. Strong, Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 5.

84 Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship, 116. Roy Strong links it with the fact that Elizabeth was excommunicated in 1570
and she used the portraits to promote and perpetuate her flattering image among the subjects: Strong, Portraits of Queen
Elizabeth I, 8. See also Elizabeth I and Her People (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2013), 57: “The Queen’s portrait
could be bought readymade in the form of prints and painted images, and from early in her reign ownership of her like-
ness can be found in the inventories of households of the clergy and merchant classes as well as the nobility and
gentry.”

85Pomeroy, Reading the Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, 17; Louis A. Montrose, “Idols of the Queen: Policy, Gender,
and the Picturing of Elizabeth I,” Representations 68 (Autumn 1999): 108–61.

86 Doran, Virginity, Divinity and Power,192.

87 Montrose, The Elizabethan Subject, 2–5; Doran, Virginity, Divinity and Power: The Portraits of Elizabeth I, 172.

88 Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth, 4.

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on coins.89 It is worth repeating the assertion of Louis Montrose that all of Elizabeth’s subjects pro-
duced and reproduced the image of their queen in a variety of ways in the course of daily life.90
While a significant part of the royal iconography was not, as Sydney Anglo and Susan Doran point
out, ‘intended for the uncouth gaze of the multitude,’91 the widespread circulation of images men-
tioned in the draft proclamation of 1563 (‘great nobler of portraietures’), as well as the variety of
media (‘payntyng, graving, printing’) seems significant. Even if we consider it partly rhetorical, the
existence of such a proclamation in the first years of Elizabeth’s reign cannot be mere coincidence,
even if the details of distribution and the attitudes of viewers must ‘remain obscure.’92
The proclamation coincides with the creation of face patterns, officially approved models
for depicting the queen that were presumably reproduced and emulated by other artists.93 We may
attribute the existence of these patterns to the fact that only a limited number of artists would have
had the opportunity to paint Elizabeth from life. Although she probably sat for seven painters during
her lifetime,94 the only existing account comes from Nicolas Hilliard’s treatise The Arte of Limning.
Hilliard recorded the queen’s remark on the shadowless style of the great Italian draughtsmen. She
was supposed to have said: ‘the lyne without shadowe showeth all to a good jugment and, the best
to showe ones selfe neddeth no shadow of place but rather the oppen light.’95 She also apparently
decided to sit for a portrait in the full sunlight of the garden. Hilliard concluded it as follows: ‘beau-
ty and good favor is like cleare truth, which is not shamed with the light, nor need to bee
obscured.’96

89However Sydney Anglo soberly notes that “the coinage was, beyond comparison, the most far-reaching medium for
the display of royal portraiture, dynastic badges and political epigraphy; and it remains the most striking evidence of
their limited efficacy. There is no reason to suppose that sixteenth-century folk contemplated the coins in their purses
more assiduously than we do.” Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship, 118.

90Carole Levin, “The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation (review),” Shakespeare Quarterly
58, no. 2 (2007): 248–49.

91 Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship, 116. Doran, Virginity, Divinity and Power, 192.

92 Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship, 98, 112, 116.

93Roy Strong distinguished several types, among them: 1. Angular frontal image; 2. Barrington Park pattern; 3. the
Pelican-Phonenix type; 4. the Darnley Pattern; 5. the Sieve types; 6. Garter; 7. Cambridge; 8. Armada series; 9. Dit-
chley; 10. the Buccleuch; 11. Hilliard’s mask of youth: Strong, Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, 8–9.

94Being Levina Teerlinc (1551), Nicolas Hillard (ca. 1572), Federico Zuccaro (1575), an unknown French painter
(1581), Cornelius Kertel, the Serjant Painter George Gower and possibly John de Critz: See Strong, Gloriana, 14–15.

95Nicholas Hilliard’s Art of Limning. A New Edition, eds. Arthur F. Kinney, Linda Bradley Salamon (Boston: North-
eastern University Press, 1983), 28–29

96 Ibid.
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 The queen must have valued both the aesthetic and symbolic qualities of Hilliard’s shadow-
less style as she appointed him official court limner;97 and we may presume it was Hilliard who
embodied the ideals of the aforementioned royal proclamation. His miniature of 1572 (today in the
National Portrait Gallery), along with two panel paintings, the so-called Phoenix and Pelican por-
traits (ca. 1572–76), seem to have established an influential face pattern, followed by other artists
and traceable in many other royal portraits. The popularity of Hilliard’s pattern stemmed from fact
that he created a manner of representing the queen that was both truthful and flattering. While his
portraits depict the queen in her early forties, she seems more beautiful than in her early likenesses,
as though her beauty was a consequence of power.
One of the main symbolic functions of royal portraits was to affirm the continuity of king-
ship.98 According to Elizabeth herself, portraits containing ‘but the outward shadow of the body’99
were intended to portray both in the body natural and her body politic.100 This duality was often
present in the works of Elizabethan panegyrists who praised ‘both priuate and imperiall vertues’101
of the queen and her presence ‘inspiring purest zeal and reverence / Aswell unto the person as the
Power.’102 Since ruler and Crown were, as Sir Francis Bacon put it, ‘inseparable, though distinct,’103
the body natural of the king or queen served as a visual equivalent of body politic. The body politic,
as Axton demonstrated, should be contained within the natural body of the ruler.104 Kantorowicz
expressed it in the form of a paradox when he said that ‘the Crown was rarely personified but very
often bodified.’105 Royal portraits might therefore be viewed as visual representations of the state.106

97 Graham Reynolds, Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1947), 11–18.

98 Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship, 99.

99
Elizabeth I, A Letter to King Edward VI Sent with a Present of Her Portrait, 15 May 1549, in: Elizabeth I, Collected
Works, 35.

100 Axton,The Queen’s Two Bodies, 69. The legal theory of the king’s two bodies was widely recognised by the 1590’s,
which did not necessarily mean that the theory was commonly believed in.

101Sir Thomas Hughes, The Misfortunes of Artur in: Certaine Devises and Shewes Presented to her Majestie … (Lon-
don: Robert Robinson, 1587). Quoted in Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies, 77.

102Francis Davison, The Masque of Proteus in Gesta Grayorum, ed. W. W. Gregg (Oxford: Malone Society, 1914), vii.
The manuscript at the British Library, MS Harley 541.

103 Francis Bacon, Post-nati in: The Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 4 (London: W. Baynes and Son 1824), 351.

104 Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies, 12.

105 Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 382.

106 Bilson, The True Difference, 560.

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 A compelling example is the Armada Portrait (ca. 1588), an allegorical painting by George
Gower, Her Majesty’s Serjeant Painter, commemorating the victory over the Spanish Armada. It
depicts Elizabeth at the height of her reign, as providential monarch and empress.107 Her power is
staged as it was staged during the court pageants. And, like these pageants, the portrait comprises
part of the complex iconographical system in which the smallest detail was significant and meant to
imply her status as a providential monarch and saviour of the country. It is not a likeness of a Tudor
princess, but an allegory of triumphant England embodied in the figure of the queen.108 The allego-
rical representation made the queen’s image a text to be read. By this means the queen’s body was
transformed into an abstract figure of a godly ruler, built up of signs and symbols. Regalia, in this
case, acted as a visible sign of the continuity of rulership.109
It is worth noting that the symbolic power of the queen’s portraits seems to have no direct
relation to their mimetic quality. The Armada Portrait is striking for its flat composition crowded
with meticulously presented details, winding contours and a complete lack of chiaroscuro that re-
sult in the decorativeness and stiffness of the queen’s figure. Not only is it somewhat awkward but,
when compared with the portrait of Queen Mary by Antonis Mor (1554), it’s austere formalism se-
ems to be about half a century out of date. As a political instrument the portrait proved to be more
powerful. In the same way that icons were sacred representations of religious dogmas, portraits of
rulers were symbolic representations of the body politic, and did not need to be realistic because of
their inherently symbolic nature. The royal portrait served as an icon of the monarchy, as the visual
representation of anthropomorphised power.110

THE MASK OF YOUTH111

The officially sanctioned patterns for ‘her Majesty’s person and visage’ dominated the production of
royal images. Patterns were not reserved for a single artist or even workshop. Rather, images that
had found the queen’s acceptance circulated and inspired imitations. However this manner of dis-

107 Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth, 145–47.

108 Doran, Virginity, Divinity and Power, 188.

109 Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 382. Richard Hooker comments on regal government: “Crowned we see they
are, and inthronized and annointed. The Crowne a signe of militarie, the Throne of sedentarie or judiciall, the Oyle of
religious or sacred power.” See Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, book VIII, chap. 3.3.

110 See Geertz, Centers, Kings, and Charisma, 124. Pomeroy, Reading the Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, 11.

111 The term was coined by Sir Roy Strong, Gloriana, 147.
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semination, as Sir Roy Strong points out, was never an effective solution to the problem of control-
ling royal portraiture.112 For this reason, the court issued another document in 1596 concerning the
production of images, this one somewhat sharper in tone than the proclamation of 1563. The exi-
stence of this document suggests that the problem of the queen’s visual representation had never
been solved satisfactorily.
The document in question is a warrant issued in July 1596 by the Privy Council and addres-
sed to:

her Majesty’s Serjeant Painter and to all publicke officers to yelde him their assistance to-
uching the abuse committed by divers unskillfull artizans in unseemly and improperly pain-
tinge, gravinge and printing of her Majesty’s person and vysage, to her Majesty’s great of-
fence and disgrace of that beautyfull and magnanimous Majesty wherwith God hathe bles-
sed her, requiring them to cause all suche to be defaced and none to be allowed but suche as
her Majesty’s Serjeant Painter shall first have sight of.113

Louis Montrose points out that there is a subtle shift in the language between the warrant and the
earlier proclamation. The first puts its emphasis on the suitable representation of the queen’s ‘natu-
rall person, favour, or grace,’ while the second accentuates her body politic: ‘beautyfull and magna-
nimous Majesty wherwith God hathe blessed her.’114 As the queen’s beauty was an official doctrine
of the kingdom and proof of her continued ability to rule, realistic likenesses of the ageing queen
would have been considered offensive.115
The subjects had a right to see their queen’s beauty in bloom. Both Elizabethan proclama-
tions concerning portraiture emphasised the queen’s subjects to whom the pictures were addressed
and for the sake of whom they had to be magnificent. If the queen was to embody the kingdom, her
image had to fill the English onlookers with pride, and in order to satisfy the expectations of those
viewers, it was necessary for the queen to recant her body natural. Her individual facial features
were replaced over time by fixed mask-like patterns, and the portraits from the end of her reign de-
pict a supernatural body politic immune to the effects of ageing.

112 See Strong, Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, 7.

113 Acts of the Privy Council of England, ed. John Roche Dasent, vol. 26: 1596–1597 (London 1902: His Majesty’s Sta-
tionery Office), 69.

114 See Montrose, Elizabeth through the Looking Glass, 74.

115
See Susan Frye, Elizabeth When a Princess. Early Self-representations in a Portrait and a Letter, in The Body of the
Queen, 43.
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 With the proliferation of the royal images,116 the real face of the queen gradually dissolved
into a multiplicity of visual and textual representations communicated through a variety of media;
the total public image of the queen was formed by the different, sometimes contradictory, official
and informal portraits along with her literary personae and the written accounts of eyewitnesses, all
of which came together to form a complex, multifaceted picture. This resulted in the formation of
what we might call the queen’s ‘face politic,’ an image defined by its corporate, collective character.
Yet despite (or perhaps because of) the variety of sources, we do not know what the queen
really looked like, for her representations vary considerably. The identification of Elizabeth’s true
features is further complicated by the circulation of face patterns among artists and, later, by what
Roy Strong calls ‘the policy of rejuvenation.’117 When we compare the queen’s early portraits with
her later likenesses, we are struck by how much her image changed over time. During the forty
years of her reign, the individual features of her face had transformed themselves into an icon.118
The real face of the ageing queen was ultimately replaced with a fiction of the self-replica-
ting images, in a similar manner to the empire from Borges’ tale, tightly covered with maps.119 The
Elizabethan painters, engravers, poets and writers recall, to quote Baudrillard, “the cartographers of
the Empire that drew up a map so detailed that it ended up exactly covering the entire territory.”120
Interestingly enough, one of the most evocative portraits of Elizabeth, the Ditchley Portrait (ca.
1592), depicts the supernatural figure of the queen against a cosmic background, with her head high
in the clouds, dressed in virginal white, standing on a globe with her feet planted firmly on a map of
England.121 This image, perhaps most of all, illustrates the divine nature of the queen positioned

116 Frye, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation, 10. Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth, 5.

117 Strong, Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, 17–18. Pomeroy, Reading the Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, 13. Pomeroy
asks whether royal portraits of Elizabeth actually discover what she looked like or rather did “the combination of flatte-
ry, vanity, and convention make an impenetrable veil?”

118 Christopher Haigh argues that “the public Elizabeth was not a real person, but a cluster of images.” He quotes Tho-
mas Dekker’s play Old Fortunatus (1599), in which an old man is travelling to the temple of Eliza: “Even to her temple
are my feeble limbs travelling. Some call her Pandora, some Gloriana, some Cynthia, some Belphoebe, some Astraea,
all by several names to express several loves.” The Reign of Elizabeth I, ed. Christopher Haigh (Basingstoke: Macmil-
lan, 1984), 5.

119Jorge Luis Borges, On Exactitude in Science in: Collected Fictions, transl. Andrew Hurley (New York: Viking,
1998), 325.

120Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, in: Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford; Stanford University
Press, 1988), 166.

121The map has been identified as a cartographic image of Britain, deriving from Christopher Saxton’s collection of
printed maps. See Montrose, Elizabeth through the Looking Glass, 71.
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‘between England and God.’122 The first line of the verse inscribed on the canvas reads ‘The prince
of light. The Sonne,’ an allusion to the queen’s male body politic that also indicates her superhuman
qualities. Her features are shown quite realistically, revealing the work of time,123 yet it is by no
means a portrait of a lady in her sixties; on the contrary, it is an expression of the queen’s quasi-re-
ligious role as guarantor of the country’s prosperity.
The cosmic perspective also serves as a political allegory in a depiction of the queen that
appears as the frontispiece to John Case’s Sphaera Civitatis (1588).124 The book, dedicated to Sir
Christopher Hatton, an Elizabethan courtier and diplomat, is a commentary on Aristotle’s Politics,
in which Case defends monarchy and female rule. He argues that monarchical rule parallels God’s
rule of the universe, which is why virtue, not gender, gives a ruler the right to govern, but also why
a monarchy should be governed only by a king, standing above his councillors.125 A diagram on the
frontispiece is an allegorical illustration of this thesis, and it also is a very peculiar representation of
the body politic of the queen. The queen’s body is depicted as part of the Ptolemaic universe, consi-
sting of seven spheres, each ruled by one planet and corresponding to an aspect of good governan-
ce: Majesty, Prudence, Fortitude, Religion, Mercy, Eloquence and Abundance. At its centre is Im-
movable Justice. This might be interpreted as an allegorical representation of mystical body politic
reimagined as the cosmic order in which the queen is primum mobile, as mentioned in the poem by
Richard Latewar’s that opens the book.126
Sergio Bertelli has noted that when the king was in public he was supposed to remain im-
mobile as a statue, thus representing the stability of his rule.127 A similar immobility is found in of-
ficial portraits, of which the Ditchley Portrait is an excellent example. The queen is portrayed in a
virginal white dress that covers her body and almost resembles armour, making the queen seem as
motionless as an idol and as radiant as the sun.128 This tendency reached its climax in the queen’s

122 Frye, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation, 114.

123This was promptly corrected: the picture has a number of copies and in all of them the queen’s face was depicted in
an idealised, youthful manner. Riehl, The Face of Queenship, 154–56.

124 John Case, Sphaera Civitatis (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1588).

125Doran, Virginity, Divinity and Power, 184. Charles B. Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance En-
gland (Kingston and Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 1983), 87.

126 Strong, Gloriana, 111.

127 Bertelli, The King’s Body, 17.

128 Pomeroy, Reading the Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, 57–58.

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funeral effigy which was, to use the words of Henry Chettle, ‘the lively picture of her Highnesse
whole body, crowned in her Parliament robes, lying on the corpse balmed and leaded, covered with
velvet, borne on a chariot, drawne by four horses draped in black velvet.’129 Henry Petowe in a la-
mentation on the death of the queen testified to the disturbing significance between the queen and
her effigy: ‘He that knew her, and had Eliza seene, / Would sweare that figure were faire England’s
Queene.’130 Thus the Elizabethan royal performance was staged for the last time, and her natural
body eternally gave way to the body politic.
*
To paraphrase Simone de Beauvoir, one is not born a queen, but rather becomes one.131 The process
of becoming a queen involved establishing control of military, civil and religious affairs, but also
control of oneself. In order to occupy her place on the political stage, it was necessary for Queen
Elizabeth to control her public performance in order to be perceived as both a woman and a ruler.
The queen’s body natural, in particular, had to be subordinated to the ageless and sexless body poli-
tic, which, as Kantorowicz characterised it, ‘represents, like the angels, the Immutable within
Time.’132 The queen’s motto semper eadem rings proudly, but also bitterly: in order to be ‘always
the same’ she had to abandon her right to change, to age and to die. Despite the success of her reign,
it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the queen’s body natural was held hostage by her body po-
litic.
The self-presentation of the queen, as well as the visual and literary representations of her
person might be perceived as beautifying mirrors reflecting an invariably perfect image. The aesthe-
tic excellence of her images represented the moral perfection of a queen who was ‘a mirror of cum-
lie & orderlier lyvinge to all her court.’133 The analysis of the Elizabethan portraiture, however, le-
ads to the paradoxical conclusion that the queen’s face politic, established by her portraiture, was
disturbingly similar to a funeral effigy. It is as if the queen had to die to become a Queen: her physi-
cal existence replaced by a sacred personification of the continuity of kingship.

129 Chettle, Englands Mourning Garment, sig. F2. See also Loomis, The Death of Elizabeth, 7–46.

130 Henry Petowe, Elizabetha quasi vivens, Eliza’s Funerall (London: E. Allde for M. Lawe, 1603).

131Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 301. Originally: “One is not born, but ra-
ther becomes, a woman.”

132 Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 8.

133
Roger Ascham, a draft of The Scholemaster (ca. 1562). The manuscript at the British Library, sig. Royal MS 18B.-
XXIV.2, fol. 70r–v. Quoted in Hunt and Whitelock, Tudor Queenship, 137.
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