Queen Elizabeth I, the Ditchley Portrait
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (about 1561 to 1636) · About 1592
Elizabeth stands on a map of England, her feet planted on Oxfordshire, her white dress spreading like a tent across the whole width of the canvas. Behind her the sky is split in two: storm clouds and lightning on one side, clear sunlight on the other. She is nearly sixty years old but shown ageless, with a great wired veil, ropes of pearls, a jewelled fan and a face of pale, unlined calm. It is the largest and most theatrical portrait of her that survives, and it was designed to be read like a poem.
Gheeraerts, a Flemish painter working in London, made the picture for Sir Henry Lee, the Queen's former champion, probably to mark her visit to his house at Ditchley in fifteen ninety two. Lee had retired from court and taken a mistress, and the portrait is part apology, part celebration. The sonnet on the right, now partly cut away, speaks of the sun that can forgive after the storm. Look closely at the map under her feet, where towns are named in tiny letters, and at the earring shaped like an armillary sphere, a symbol of her wisdom.
The painting stayed at Ditchley for centuries and came to the gallery in nineteen thirty two. It has been trimmed at the sides, which is why the composition feels so tight, and the surface shows the pearls and gold thread painted with a jeweller's patience. More than any other image it defines the idea of Gloriana, the queen as the weather of the nation itself.
Did You Know? The queen's feet rest on a real map: she stands almost exactly on Ditchley in Oxfordshire, the house of the man who commissioned the painting.
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