To examine the portraits of Elizabeth I is to witness the creation of the legend of the Virgin Queen, of Gloriana and her burgeoning empire. The history of the portraiture is that of the deliberate manufacture of an image powerful enough to hold together a people divided by both rigid hierarchy and religious belief. When Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, her subjects had an all-too-vivid memory of military defeat and religious turmoil. Restoring stability to the kingdom involved the image of the Queen herself--over the years, she was transmuted from an elegant aristocrat into a cosmic vision. In Gloriana, Roy Strong provides a richly detailed analysis of all the major portraits.

Explores the long relationship between the celebrated photographer and the British royal family, offering insight into how his royal portraits shaped the monarchy's public image throughout the mid-20th century.

With just under a thousand portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, the National Portrait Gallery boasts some of the most treasured and famous official portraits of the Queen captured at key historic moments, as well as day-to-day images of the monarch at home and with family, following her journey from childhood, to princess and Queen, mother and grandmother. This publication highlights the most important portraits of Elizabeth II from the Gallery's Collection. Paintings and photographs from the birth of Elizabeth II to the present will take readers on a visual journey through the life of Britain's foremost icon. 0The book will reflect on the Queen's life, presenting family photographs alongside important formal portraits to explore how, as her reign became record-breaking, she became an iconic figure in modern British culture and history. The publication features works by key artists depicting the Queen from 1926 to the present day, including Baron, Cecil Beaton, Dorothy Wilding, Patrick Lichfield, Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz and David Bailey. 0This book features an introductory essay by Alexandra Schulman, exploring how the collected portraits depict the Queen throughout her life and reign, and a timeline of key historical events and moments from Elizabeth II's life.

This is a photographic portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, from her first official photograph as a baby in 1926 to her greeting President Obama at Buckingham Palace in 2009. Each chapter begins with a text by bestselling historian and biographer Philip Ziegler, covering the key royal and historical events of the period.

The Folger Shakespeare Library includes among its holdings the largest collection of materials in North America relating to Elizabeth I, including 38 documents signed by the queen. On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Elizabeth's death in March 1603, the Folger Library mounted an ambitious exhibition of more than one hundred books, manuscripts, and works of art from its collections. stunning detail, as affectionate stepdaughter and censorious cousin, as humanist prince, as powerful and often capricious patroness, and as a private person. She was the centre not only of national culture but also of a vibrant court culture with complex ritual practices such as elaborate New Year's gift exchanges and summertime progresses through the countryside. Her self-fashioning literally involved the use of fashion. She dressed to be seen; her clothes made a statement about her power as a female ruler and about the stability and strength of her nation. The many portraits of Elizabeth which survive, including the 1579 Sieve portrait featured on the cover, suggest the complex interplay between the queen's politics of self-display and her powerful vanity. Sheila Ffolliott, and Barbara Hodgdon explore Elizabeth's life, her books, her portraits, the many documents in the Folger Library relating to her, and her continuing charismatic power in British and American culture.

The reign of Queen Elizabeth I, which spanned over forty years, was a time of economic stability, with outstanding successes in the fields of maritime exploration and defence. The period also saw a huge expansion in trade, the creation of new industries, a rise in social mobility, urban isation and the development of an extraordinary literary culture. Elizabeth I & Her People explores the stories of those individuals whose achievements brought about these changes in the context of an emerging national identity, as well as giving a fascina ting glimpse into their way of life through accessories and artefacts. The book, which accompanies a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, features portraits of the Queen and her courtiers, including explorers and sea captains such as Francis Drake and Martin Frobisher, statesmen and soldiers such as William Cecil, Lord Burghley and Christopher Hatton and enchanting portraits of the Queen's female courtiers such as Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury, and Elizabeth Vernon, Countes s of Southampton. However, from the mid - sixteenth - century interest in portraiture broadened, as members of a growing wealthy middle class sought to have their likenesses captured for posterity. The book includes intriguing lesser - known images of Elizabeth an merchants, lawyers, goldsmiths, butchers, calligraphers, playwrights and artists - all of whom contributed to the making of a nation and a new world power.

No other woman in world history has been of such compulsive interest as Elizabeth Tudor. While the rest of the 16th-century Europe was subject to the bloodshed of religious war, Tudor peace brought England its great flowering of the arts. Central to that flowering was the enigmatic legend of the Queen herself, a myth deliberately created and sustained over four decades by public spectacle and courtly chivalry, by private sonnet and official oration.