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Elizabeth
I at the National Portrait Gallery ~ Elizabeth
I Portraits
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What did Queen Elizabeth I really look like? The portraits give us some idea of her physical appearance, but from them alone it is not easy to visualize what she really looked like. While the pale faced woman with reddish-gold hair is common to all of them, it seems that every painter has captured a slightly different image of her. Contemporary accounts of her appearance do not help to clarify the matter either as they are even more varied than the surviving visual images. However, with some careful shifting through the evidence, it is possible to gauge a visual impression of the great Queen. |
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It is easy to see, for example, how the young Lady Elizabeth grew into the handsome woman in the Sieve Portrait, and then into the triumphant Queen in the Ditchley painting, and therefore we can put faith in the visual record left to us by these painters. We can be almost completely certain that her hair was a golden red, her eyes dark brown, her nose ridged or hooked in the middle, her lips rather thin, and her cheek bones pronounced. Her hair was also probably naturally curly or at least wavy. She may well have had freckles on her pale skin, but like all Elizabethan ladies she would have taken care to avoid getting the sun on her face, and the make up she wore for most of her monarchical life would have protected her delicate skin from a suntan. White skin was fashionable in Tudor times as it was what distinguished the rich from the poor. If a person had white skin, it showed that he or she did not have to work for a living. Elizabeth also had exceptionally long fingers, possibly made even more striking by long finger nails. |
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The gloves on display
at Hatfield House show quite clearly that Elizabeth was rightly proud of
what she perhaps considered her most handsome feature. Her height again
is different to determine absolutely, but modern estimates put it between
5ft 3in and 5ft 5in. Much has been written about the Queen’s vanity, but
in all likelihood, the extent of it has been exaggerated. The Tudor period
was an extravagant period, and vanity was perhaps a prime ingredient. Court
life was flamboyant and people dressed to impress. As monarch, it was Elizabeth’s
duty to dress better than
everyone else. |
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From the below contemporary descriptions of the Queen, it is again possible to see that different people, at different periods of the Queen’s life, saw the Queen differently. It is very much a case of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, and how we see someone physically depends to a large extent on our feelings for that person, such as whether we admire then, fear them, or dislike them. To those who worshipped Elizabeth as Gloriana, such as Thomas Platter, she does indeed appear eternally youthful, whereas foreigners to the realm were more objective, indifferent perhaps, and merely described what they saw. |
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“Her face is comely rather than handsome, but she is tall and well-formed, with good skin, though swarthy; she has fine eyes.” Sir James Melville in his Memoirs described the young Queen’s hair as“more reddish than yellow, and curled in appearance naturally.” |
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“Short, and ruddy in complexion; very strongly built.” “...her face oblong, fair, but wrinkled, her eyes small, yet black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked, her lips narrow and her teeth black; her hair was of an auburn colour, but false; upon her head she had a small crown. Her bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry. Her hands were slender, her fingers rather long, and her stature neither tall nor low; her air was stately, and her manner of speaking mild and obliging.” |
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Sir Francis Bacon described her as “tall of stature”. “Slender and straight; her hair inclined to pale yellow; her forehead large and fair; her eyes lively and sweet, but short sighted, her nose somewhat rising in the midst; her countenance was somewhat long, but yet of admirable beauty, in a most delightful composition of majesty and modesty” “Very youthful still in appearance, seeming no more than twenty years of age.” |
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