What did Queen Elizabeth I really look like?
Re-creation of Elizabeth I from a 1560s portrait. Acquired in London in the 1960s by Mary Hill Bishop (d. 1991), Chelsea Park Gardens.
What did Elizabeth I really look like? Today we’re going to dive into her portraits and contemporary descriptions to reconstruct the face of Elizabeth Tudor.
There are dozens if not hundreds of images of Queen Elizabeth that you can see today. But they all look just a little different. Which is the most accurate - which reveals the true Elizabeth?
Elizabeth was in a unique situation. As a female monarch, it was crucial that she did not let one single crack of her personal vulnerability show. Remember, portraits at this time were more about power and image than about faithfully rendering a subject. Her portraits show Elizabeth in beautiful clothing, absolutely surrounded by wealth and splendor. She’s depicted as youthful and thin, even through her old age.
It was remarked more than once that Elizabeth could be a vain woman. Even outside of personal vanity and the desire to appear beautiful to her subjects, her image was to reflect the evergreen power that England was.
One of Elizabeth’s approved portrait painters was Nicholas Hilliard. He remarked that Elizabeth was very picky about which images were approved. Much the way we take selfies with good lighting today, Elizabeth insisted that she be painted while sitting in the open light, so that no shadows would come across her face. This explains why many portraits of her look a bit flat, and lack the depth of light and shadow. Hilliard would have also been asked to brush away freckles, dark circles, wrinkles, or any other skin imperfections.
We only have a few portraits of a very young Elizabeth. Even this famous portrait of her coronation wasn’t painted until after her death.
A few that I find very accurate looking are those from her early years as Queen. Elizabeth was never described as a great beauty, something that she was keenly aware of, but her portraits have a very noble quality.
Elizabeth got her beautiful red gold hair from her father’s side, but I love that she got the dark eyes of her mother.
The features that are consistent across her portraits are a thin, graceful frame, a nose with a hook in the middle, rather small lips, and a high forehead. It appears that her hair was naturally curly or wavy - sometimes the styling of her wigs makes this difficult to tell. She probably had some freckles, although these likely wouldn’t be shown in her portraits.
I also see a lot of similarities in face and nose shape to Anne Boleyn - assuming this portrait of Anne is somewhat accurate.
Also like her mother, Elizabeth had a kind of charm that was difficult to measure in a portrait. It was said that she was incredibly witty and charming in person. Sir Robert Cecil, once wrote, “Many painters have done portraits of the Queen but none has sufficiently shown her looks or charms. Her Majesty forbids the showing of any portraits which are ugly until they are improved.”
As Elizabeth aged, she became more and more self conscious. A severe case of smallpox in her late twenties left her with facial scarring.
She remedied this by using a common makeup product at the time, called Venetian Ceruse. We know now that this is a toxic mix of vinegar and lead.
However, the makeup wasn’t quite a cakey as we think of it today. It was more of a medium-coverage white makeup that would blend with the skin, not so much a layer of paint.
Near the end of her life, we know she had bad teeth and was partially bald. She took great pains to conceal these perceived weaknesses under heavy cosmetics and wigs.
The Darnley Portrait
One of the last portraits of Elizabeth that can really be trusted is called The Darnley Portrait. Painted around 1575, this image shows Elizabeth at the approximate age of 41.
She loved this portrait so much that she approved its use as a pattern for the rest of her life, essentially asking artists to copy and paste this exact same face from that point forward. This face was reproduced over and over, with the clothing and other styling swapped to match the occasion and fashion moment.
Art historians refer to this portrait as her “Mask of Youth”, as no surviving portraits between 1596 and Elizabeth's death in 1603 show the aging queen as she truly was.
For my interpretation of Queen Elizabeth, I’ve used one of my favorites, painted in the 1560s. This was painted by an unidentified painter shortly after she had ascended the throne and was in private hands for a long time. It was probably circulated as an image of Elizabeth for a potential marriage alliance. To me, this one has the most detail out of all her images. This one is pre-smallpox.
I have two different versions of this, one that is faithful to the portrait and the other that shows her face from a different angle. I feel like we constantly see Elizabeth’s face from this single angle, so I wanted to try something new.
I also have a modern day version created from the Darnley portrait.
For my interpretation of Queen Elizabeth, I’ve used one of my favorites, painted in the 1560s. This was painted by an unidentified painter shortly after she had ascended the throne and was in private hands for a long time. It was probably circulated as an image of Elizabeth for a potential marriage alliance.
Royalty Now Recommended Reading:
Blood, Fire & Gold: The Story of Elizabeth I & Catherine de Medici by Estelle Paranque
Elizabeth I by Anne Somerset
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