The Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I
Unknown English artist · about 1588
Elizabeth the First fills the panel in a dress of black velvet and ivory silk encrusted with pearls and gold bows, her face pale and ageless, her right hand resting on a globe with the fingers spread over the Americas. Behind her two windows show the sea. On the left the English fleet sails out in fair weather to meet the Spanish Armada; on the right the Spanish ships are hurled onto a rocky coast by a storm. The portrait was painted around fifteen eighty eight, the year of the Armada, and it turns the victory into a statement of imperial destiny.
Every object has a meaning. The imperial crown at her elbow claims that England is an empire owing nothing to pope or emperor. The mermaid carved on the chair behind her was a symbol of seduction and warns of the dangers that Elizabeth had overcome. The pearls stood for virginity and for the wealth of the sea. The queen's face is a mask, painted from an approved pattern rather than from life, because by the fifteen eighties her image was controlled as carefully as a modern brand. Look at the sharp, flat treatment of the dress against the more atmospheric painting of the sea, which suggests that specialists worked on different parts.
Three versions of the portrait survive. This one belonged to the Drake family for centuries, descending from Sir Francis Drake, the Armada's most famous captain. In twenty sixteen it was offered for sale and a public appeal raised over ten million pounds in a few months, with thousands of small donations, so that it could hang here at Greenwich, on the very site of the palace where Elizabeth was born. It was conserved and the later dark overpainting in the windows was removed to reveal the two seascapes as they were originally painted.
Did You Know? The Queen's House stands on the site of Greenwich Palace, where Elizabeth was born in fifteen thirty three, so the portrait has come home.
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