Queen Elizabeth I and a Serpent

Well, knock me off my bar stool with a feather!

Portrait of Elizabeth I reveals she held serpent where a posy now appears
Behind the enigmatic smile: National Portrait Gallery to display 16th century work which has given up its secret after 400 years

Maev Kennedy guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 4 March 2010 13.27 GMT

Detail from the portrait of Queen Elizabeth I showing the outline of the coiled serpent she originally held. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery/PA

The queen wears a magnificent gown and a faint, enigmatic smile ‑ but then she knows what she really holds in her hands, a secret revealed again to the world after more than 400 years.

Many portraits of Elizabeth I show her holding a posy, a conventional symbol of virginity or virtue. The National Portrait Gallery has discovered that in this portrait Gloriana originally held a far more disturbing object ‑ a serpent twined around her fingers.

A serpent can sometimes represent wisdom and judgment, as in the serpent and staff symbol of medicine, but in Christian iconography it is more often a symbol of sin or even the devil. [And in antiquity it was a symbol for the Great Goddess, so it wouldn't have been a stretch for the artist to associate Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, with the Great Goddess, who was virgin/mother/crone.]

The unknown artist, painting around the late 1580s, clearly had a last-minute panic about the ambiguity of the image: the scaly blue-green and black serpent was painted out, and replaced with the safe ‑ if slightly oddly shaped ‑ posy.

Tarnya Cooper, curator of 16th century paintings at the gallery, who has led the research into several Tudor portraits about to be redisplayed, says the serpent is a unique attribute in portraits of the queen. "The portrait of Elizabeth I with a hidden serpent is a really unusual survival. Yet it is difficult to know exactly why the serpent may have been originally included, or how common this motif might have been. The queen certainly owned jewellery and costume including emblems of serpents, which were probably understood as a symbol of wisdom. However, no other portrait of Elizabeth appears to depict her holding a snake."

The gallery has owned the portrait for a century, but its condition is poor and it has not been on display since 1921. It will now be included in an exhibition opening later this month, Concealed and Revealed: The Changing Faces of Elizabeth I, of paintings made from the 1560s until just after the queen's death in 1603, which have all been altered in some way.

The x-rays that drove the serpent out of its lair also revealed another secret: the queen's exceptionally bumpy forehead is because of the inner woman trying to get out. The portrait was painted over an earlier, unfinished painting of another woman, probably by a different artist: the eyes and nose of the lost woman can just be seen in the queen's forehead.

Cooper said: "The recent technical analysis on these remarkable portraits has been critical to our understanding of Tudor painting."

The artist may never have seen the queen in the flesh ‑ and certainly, the art historians believe, never saw the serpent.

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Information from the National Portrait Gallery:

Queen Elizabeth I
News Release

4 March 2010

MYSTERY SNAKE REVEALED IN ELIZABETH I PORTRAIT. NEW RESEARCH SHOWS CHANGING FACES OF THE TUDOR QUEEN

Scientific detective work has revealed a mysterious coiled serpent in the hands of Queen Elizabeth I, which was painted out by the artist shortly afterwards, in a portrait at the National Portrait Gallery. It has also been revealed that this portrait of the queen, which has not been on display at the Gallery since 1921, was painted over an unfinished portrait of an unknown sitter. The revelations about this painting and three others of the Tudor queen will form a new display, Concealed and Revealed: The Changing Faces of Elizabeth I, from 13 March at the National Portrait Gallery as part of the Making Art in Tudor Britain project led by Dr Tarnya Cooper.

The portrait of Elizabeth I with the serpent (NPG 200) was painted by an unknown artist in the 1580s or early 1590s. Degradation over time has revealed that Elizabeth I was originally painted holding the serpent, the outline of which is now visible on the surface. Paint analysis has shown that the snake was part of the original design, painted at the same time as the rest of the portrait, and Elizabeth's fingers were originally clasped around the snake (as seen in the artist's impression). At the final stage of painting a decision was made not to include this emblem, and the Queen was shown holding a small bunch of roses instead. A serpent was sometimes used to represent wisdom, prudence and reasoned judgment - all fitting attributes for a Queen - but in the Christian tradition serpents have also been used to represent Satan and original sin. The removal of the snake may therefore have been due to the ambiguity of the emblem. The snake is mainly black, but has greenish blue scales and was almost certainly painted from imagination.

It has also been revealed that the same portrait was painted over the unfinished portrait of an unknown woman. X-ray photography shows a female head facing in the opposite direction and in a higher position than the queen. The eyes and nose of the first face can be seen where paint has been lost from Elizabeth's forehead. The identity of this original sitter remains a mystery, but the unfinished portrait was very competently painted and appears to be by a different painter. This discovery confirms that sixteenth-century panels were sometimes re-used and recycled by artists. The unknown woman appears to have been wearing a French hood, fashionable in 1570-1580s, suggesting that there may have been a period of a few years before the panel was re-used for the portrait of Elizabeth I.

The four portraits in the display, Concealed and Revealed: The Changing Faces of Elizabeth I, are all from the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery, and two have not been on display for decades. The portraits date from the 1560s until just after the queen's death and they have all changed in appearance in some way since they were created. Advanced scientific techniques have helped to unlock clues as to how they would have originally looked. Each has recently undergone in-depth technical analysis as part of the Gallery's Making Art in Tudor Britain research project. The display will examine why the changes took place and the evidence this tells us about portraits of Elizabeth I and artistic practices in this period.

Concealed and Revealed: The Changing Faces of Elizabeth I runs from 13 March - 26 September 2010 in Room 2 of the National Portrait Gallery.

Dr Tarnya Cooper says: ‘The recent technical analysis on these remarkable portraits has been critical to our understanding of Tudor painting. The portrait of Elizabeth I with a hidden serpent is a really unusual survival. Yet, it is difficult to know exactly why the serpent may have been originally included, or how common this motif might have been. The queen certainly owned jewelry and costume including emblems of serpents, which were probably understood as a symbol of wisdom. However no other portrait of Elizabeth appears to depict her holding a snake. The current condition of the picture has meant it has not been on display for decades, and this display provides an exciting opportunity to present it to the public alongside other key portraits.'

Further information on Making Art in Tudor Britain

For further press information contact: Eleanor Macnair, Press Officer, National Portrait Gallery, Tel 0207 321 6620 (not for publication) Email emacnair@npg.org.uk

National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London, WC2H 0HE. Opening hours Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday: 10am - 6pm (Gallery closure commences at 5.50pm) Late Opening: Thursday, Friday: 10am - 9pm (Gallery closure commences at 8.50pm) Nearest Underground: Leicester Square/Charing Cross Recorded information: 020 7312 2463 General information: 020 7306 0055 Website: www.npg.org.uk

The Great Gloriana

This is Queen's Night. Presented here are two contrasting stories about two Queens - a real Queen, Elizabeth I - and those who have protrayed her over time in films - and a pretend queen who chose a life of luxury, indulgence, and crime. Here is Queen Elizabeth I in her "Coronation Portrait," aged 25.

What is there about Queen Elizabeth (the first one) that fascinates Hollywood so much?
By Cathleen McGuigan
Newsweek
Updated: 8:36 a.m. CT Oct 5, 2007

Oct. 5, 2007 - Queen Elizabeth II is so last year. This season’s royal obsession takes us back to a perennial favorite, her 16th-century namesake, Elizabeth I. Since the dawn of movies, great actresses have crowned their careers playing the enigmatic Virgin Queen. Sarah Bernhardt portrayed her in a 1911 film, Bette Davis starred in "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" in 1939 and again in 1955’s "The Virgin Queen." Glenda Jackson was, in the 1971 BBC series, the best Queen Bess, say some ardent fans. Dame Judi Dench won an Oscar as the theatergoing ruler in "Shakespeare in Love," and Helen Mirren played her on HBO (though not as brilliantly as her Oscar-winning turn as QE2). Even the flamboyant gay writer Quentin Crisp once had a go at old Queen Liz—which could’ve ignited those long-dead rumors that she was really a he.

But the greatest Elizabeth I may well be Cate Blanchett, who became an international star with her 1998 portrayal in Shekhar Kapur’s "Elizabeth." Now she’s back on the throne in the second installment of Kapur’s potential trilogy, "Elizabeth: the Golden Age," playing the monarch at middle age, in full command of her intellect, wit and subtle ability to manipulate her courtiers—if not in full control of her heart.

That the story of a queen dead for 400 years still captivates our imagination might be surprising—until you realize that here in the Colonies, we’re just coming to grips with the possibility of the first woman president. "Elizabeth really is the first woman to rule a country without a king in the modern world," says Susan Ronald, author of "The Pirate Queen." Highly educated and clever, she ruled over the expansion of England from a fragile, insolvent kingdom to an international power on the brink of empire.

Thanks to recent feminist history, "There has been a lot of study of the problems she faced and how she ruled surrounded by men," says Oxford scholar Susan Doran, whose books on Elizabeth include "Monarchy and Matrimony." The courtships of the maiden Queen by European princes were deftly turned into diplomatic tools—though the popularity of her story isn’t due just to romance and politics. There’s plenty of violence and intrigue—Elizabeth survived more than 20 assassination attempts—and the ongoing fascination with one of the most dysfunctional families in history.

Her father beheaded her mum, Anne Boleyn, when Elizabeth was 3; at the age of 9, she witnessed her stepmother, Katherine Howard, dragged screaming by the hair down a palace corridor to her own death on the chopping block. And for fashionistas, there’s the enduring appeal of the costumes in the drama: all those ruffs, opulent detachable sleeves, the pads (called, hilariously, bumrolles). And all that bling—encrustations of gold, filigrees of silver, pearls the size of gumballs.

In "Elizabeth: the Golden Age," the focus is definitely on the spectacle, though much of it is based on fact. On the eve of the Spanish Armada, the queen, on horseback and in armor, rallies her troops with the stirring words: "I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England, too." And Elizabeth did indeed agonize over the fate of her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, refusing her advisers’ counsel to execute her rival until Mary’s treachery in a plot to seize the throne made her beheading inevitable.

But history doesn’t bear out a romance with Sir Walter Raleigh—played in the film by Clive Owen with a little too much swash to his buckle—though he was a favorite at court and Elizabeth was a notorious flirt. Nor do historians believe he tossed his cloak over a puddle at her feet, let alone defeated the Spanish Armada almost single-handedly, as he does here. And when Blanchett surveys her navy’s victory from a windswept clifttop, wearing a rippling white gown and bare feet, she looks as if she just wandered in from a scene in "Lord of the Rings."

But the really juicy question about Elizabeth is always about sex. Was the Virgin Queen really a virgin? In Kapur’s first "Elizabeth," she and nobleman Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes) made love behind gauzy bed curtains. During Elizabeth’s reign, rumors of a real affair with Dudley abounded but not from sources in a position to know the truth. "I think she was a sexual creature," says Doran, "but if we’re talking intercourse, the likelihood is extremely remote. She couldn’t afford the scandal." But historians do agree that Dudley was the love of her life. When she died in 1603, courtiers found his last letter to her in the jewel box next to her bed.

Scholars continue to mine new details about Elizabeth’s life. Antonia Fraser, whose landmark book on Marie Antoinette inspired Sofia Coppola’s film, is working on a biography of Elizabeth I, to be published in 2010. "I regard Queen Elizabeth I as The Great Subject and I’ve wanted to do it for 40 years, since I wrote ‘Mary Queen of Scots'," she said in an e-mail. "Now I’ve actually got around to it, it’s even better than I thought. Politics, murder, sex—and an incomparable woman!" Elizabeth was a drama queen: the facts of her life are so tantalizing, you wonder why a moviemaker would bother to make anything up.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

A definitive biography of Elizabeth: Gloriana, The Years of Elizabeth I, by Mary M. Luke, (c) 1973.