Representation and the nation in the portraiture of Elizabeth I

Thesis

This thesis examines the representative functions of Elizabeth I's visual portraits, challenging the popular account that the queen's image was developed systematically as an icon of abstract ideas beyond her Crown; most notably the English nation. The argument suggests individual images must be properly contextualised if their representative function is to be understood fully, in particular highlighting the importance of Dutch influences upon English national representation. The discussion shows that portraits' disparate political, religious, material, circumstantial, and iconographic contexts can render them representationally dissimilar despite any aesthetic parallels that may exist between them.

Where certain of Elizabeth's painted portraits have dominated 'iconic' and 'national' readings of her visual representation, chapter I shows that the queen's painted images exhibited little symbolic homogeneity beyond representing the monarch and Crown and were never a conduit for national expression. The rare instances of Elizabeth being rendered as a personification of England occur only in printed and medallic portraiture composed outside England (considered in chapters II and III, respectively). National representation would have required a far greater level of abstraction than normally seen in Elizabeth's image and was not a common feature of the queen's portraits in any media.

Throughout this thesis, portraits are analysed in relation to their unique context, rather than to one another. The discussion considers selected images in individual case studies to minimise the chances of applying potentially anachronistic interpretive models to and between them. Dividing these case studies into typological chapters in turn highlights how images' symbolic functions are affected by the media in which it is realised.

The discussion concludes that Elizabeth's portraits were composed individually to represent the queen in manners specific to each image's context. Whilst abstract ideas other than the Crown are sometimes represented in Elizabeth's portraits, those characterisations are by no means regular. The nation is one of these ideas.

Authors: Howells, T

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-00gjmwky7
• Type of award: MLitt
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English