The Face of Robert Dudley, Queen Elizabeth’s Life Long Love
Today, we’re talking about Robert Dudley, Queen Elizabeth I’s favorite of many years, who was thought to be the only man Queen Elizabeth ever loved.
But was he truly the love of Queen Elizabeth’s life? Or was he just another power hungry man that would do anything, including murder, for power? In the full history video, we dive deep into the history of Robert Dudley, the murder scandal he was involved in when his wife mysteriously died, and his famous love of Queen Elizabeth. Check out that video here.
Robert Dudley by an unknown artist, c. 1564.
Robert Dudley by an unknown artist, c. 1575
Robert Dudley, also by an unknown artist, c. 1575
Here on the blog, we’ll be talking about Dudley’s appearance, which, luckily for me, is not all that mysterious! We have many portraits from his lifetime available to reference. Probably the most well known image, which I’ve used for my re-creation, is this life portrait with an unknown artist. It depicts Robert at the age of 32, during the peak years of his affair with Elizabeth. He’s standing, in spectacularly expensive clothing, in front of the symbols of the Order of Saint Michael, and the Order of the Garter.
Even though his eyes appear in this portrait to be a dark brown, we see in other, cleaner portraits from years later that they are a clear grey. We have many subsequent portraits of Dudley as he ages, all showing a serious man with dark hair and a beard tinged with red.
