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| National Portrait Gallery buys postcard-sized portrait of Elizabeth I | National Portrait Gallery buys postcard-sized portrait of Elizabeth I |
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| The National Portrait Gallery has spent £329,000 on a postcard-sized painting about which it knows almost nothing, except that it is more than 400 years old, exquisitely painted, and outrageously flattering. Elizabeth I was in her late 50s, and losing teeth and hair, when the image of a girlish round-faced queen, dazzling in cloth of gold and diamonds, was created. | The National Portrait Gallery has spent £329,000 on a postcard-sized painting about which it knows almost nothing, except that it is more than 400 years old, exquisitely painted, and outrageously flattering. Elizabeth I was in her late 50s, and losing teeth and hair, when the image of a girlish round-faced queen, dazzling in cloth of gold and diamonds, was created. |
| The painting, to be shown for the first time in a major exhibition at the NPG next autumn, shows Elizabeth in the role of Paris, choosing between the goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. While Paris launched the Trojan war by choosing Aphrodite, the queen becomes a peacemaker by cannily keeping the football-sized prize for herself. | The painting, to be shown for the first time in a major exhibition at the NPG next autumn, shows Elizabeth in the role of Paris, choosing between the goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. While Paris launched the Trojan war by choosing Aphrodite, the queen becomes a peacemaker by cannily keeping the football-sized prize for herself. |
| The previously unknown painting, believed to be by Isaac Oliver, one of the greatest miniaturists of the Tudor court, resurfaced still in its original frame in a house clearance in the south-east. Tanya Cooper, the chief curator at the NPG, knows no more of its pedigree, but assumes it was commissioned by a favour-seeking courtier who knew the queen's temperament well enough to trowel on the flattery. An earlier version by another artist, also in the exhibition, was owned by Elizabeth herself and is still in the royal collection. | The previously unknown painting, believed to be by Isaac Oliver, one of the greatest miniaturists of the Tudor court, resurfaced still in its original frame in a house clearance in the south-east. Tanya Cooper, the chief curator at the NPG, knows no more of its pedigree, but assumes it was commissioned by a favour-seeking courtier who knew the queen's temperament well enough to trowel on the flattery. An earlier version by another artist, also in the exhibition, was owned by Elizabeth herself and is still in the royal collection. |
| The NPG acquired the painting through the Weiss Gallery after it was sold last year at a Christie's auction. | The NPG acquired the painting through the Weiss Gallery after it was sold last year at a Christie's auction. |
| The work will be shown with a selection of Elizabeth's portraits from public and private collections, including one being loaned by the Marquess of Salisbury at Hatfield House which shows the queen with an ermine, a symbol of purity – the animal was supposed to die of shame if its beautiful white coat was soiled – gazing up quizzically from her wrist. | |
| Portraits of Elizabeth's courtiers will include one of her most trusted advisers, William Cecil, riding on a mule. The portrait, from the Bodleian Library, is a comical image but he really did own a mule, a present from the French ambassador, and was known to relax by riding it around his garden. | |
| The exhibition will bring together some long-separated couples including Thomas Howard and Margaret Dudley, Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, who were for centuries in separate collections, and even rarer portraits of commoners including a female professional calligrapher and a child and his nurse. Cooper said that as merchants' prosperity boomed in Tudor England, they began to ape the aristocracy in commissioning portraits – a fashion mocked in a contemporary play which undoubtedly amused the much-portrayed Elizabeth, in the lines: "Now every citizen's wife that wears a velvett hatt must have her picture in the parlour." | The exhibition will bring together some long-separated couples including Thomas Howard and Margaret Dudley, Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, who were for centuries in separate collections, and even rarer portraits of commoners including a female professional calligrapher and a child and his nurse. Cooper said that as merchants' prosperity boomed in Tudor England, they began to ape the aristocracy in commissioning portraits – a fashion mocked in a contemporary play which undoubtedly amused the much-portrayed Elizabeth, in the lines: "Now every citizen's wife that wears a velvett hatt must have her picture in the parlour." |
| • Elizabeth I and her people, 10 October 2013 – 4 January 2014 | • Elizabeth I and her people, 10 October 2013 – 4 January 2014 |