Elizabethan portraiture - Symbolism

The Siena Sieve Portrait, Metsys the Younger, 1583

According to Penry Williams in the book "The later Tudors", "While the older, biblical tradition of portraiture continued until the end of the reign, it was overshadowed by a succession of symbolic portraits, mostly based upon classical mythology. Elizabeth was shown with a sieve, casting her as a Vestal Virgin; with an ermine, the symbol of purity, with her feet on the map of England, storm clouds behind her and sunshine ahead; and with a rainbow, the symbol of peace. In the latter years of the reign it was fashionable to portray her as Cynthia or Diana, both embodiments of the same goddess, representing the moon and the seas, and also both beauty and chastity.
Elizabeth's appearance in these portraits was modelled on a pattern derived from the Petrarchan ideal of womanhood: her golden hair, her fair complexion, the red and white roses in her cheeks, the embems of the sieve and the ermine, were all typical.She used the Petrarchan convention of the chaste beloved to form her own self-image, attracting suitors but holding them at a distance, and wrote verses in the style of Petrarch's imitators:

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I am and not, I freeze and yet I am burned."

"The identification of the sieve with chastity is derived from the story of Tuccia, the Vestal Virgin, who carried water in a sieve from Tiber to the Temple without spilling a drop. The Ermine was believed to prefer death to the dirtying of its white fur, and hence became  symbol of purity. In the person of Cynthia and Diana, Elizabeth could be credited with power over the cosmos."

In "The Elizabethan world", Susan Doran and Norman Jones say that: "We point out that the symbols associated with the Virgin Queen had other meanings: the rose, for example, was connected to the Tudor dinasty; the pearl to virginity in general, as well as to uniqueness (based partly on the pun of pearls with peerless); hence, a ballad of 1584 could refer to the Queen as 'the peerles pearle of princes all' whose like on the earth was never seen."

"The "Ermine" portrait is another of the allegorical portraits of Queen Elizabeth of England.

This is Marileecody.com's description:  "Why is Elizabeth seated with an ermine? It was the symbol of royalty; and, if you look closely at the animal, you can see the gold crown it wears. The crown symbolizes majesty and purity. As for the bejeweled black gown and background - black and white were the queen's favorite colors. Also, the deep, dark color reinforces the symbolic gravity of the painting.

In this portrait, Elizabeth wears the famous 'Three Brothers' jewel - a gem made of three diamonds set in a triangle around a pointed diamond. It was one of her most treasured jewels. The sword of state rests on the table beside the queen and symbolizes justice; she also holds an olive branch to symbolize peace."

1585 "Ermine" portrait by Nicholas Hilliard (Hatfield House, Hatfield UK)

Her dark gown is decorated with paired bands, possibly parallel slashes or straps marked by bands on the lengthwise edges and four marks along the length of each strap between the bands. Gold beads are placed in between the paired slashes or straps. Her bodice and skirt appear to be joined along a seam running down the entire length of the bodice and skirt, the sides of the seam joined by spectacular goldwork and gem froggings. The necklace beneath her ruff is spectacular. Her inner ruff appears to have a crease to allow it to slope upwards more in back where it is confined by her outer ruff and veil. The headdress is jeweled all around its periphery, surmounted by corona of more jewels. Sleeve rolls are repaced by two bands of jewels on each sleeve. Her huge necklaces are made of black pearls.

Norris in Tudor Costume and Fashion, p. 602 (Dover re-issue 1997), describes her dress - "The lines of the black velvet dress, pounced all over with cuttes and engraved gold buttons, headdress, and circular ruff, suggest that the style is of the same make as described under the 'Portland' portrait... The cutwork, of which the circular ruff and cuffs are composed, is a very beautiful specimen of the lace-makers' craft... The jewels worn are diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and pearls. An ermine climbing up the Queen's left wrist and peering into her face has given the title to the painting. As an emblem of chastity, the ermine was an especially appropriate compliment to the Virgin Queen."

"Elizabeth stands before a dark archway holding a rainbow above which is inscribed the Latin motto “NON SINE SOLE IRIS”: no rainbow without a sun. With her other hand she lightly touches the hem of her extraordinarily ornate cloak, painted partly in gold leaf and decorated with human eyes and ears. One of its sleeves is prominently decorated with a jewelled serpent. The queen also wears a bodice decorated with flowers, three pearl necklaces, several bracelets, a brooch in the form of a cross and a fantstically ornate head-dress. Her outfit is completed by an open standing ruff, a gauzy transparent veil and a ballooning diaphanous lace-embroidered collar of such extent it makes her resemble some strange hybrid of human being and winged insect.

Elizabeth I was getting on for 70 when the picture was painted, but she has not been made to look it. She controlled her own public image rigorously. Her portraitists knew that in the world of art she was to be frozen in perpetual youth. There is something slightly quizzical about the look on her face, as if she is challenging the viewer to decode the meaning of the complicated allegory behind which she has been veiled. Elizabeth enjoyed codes and ciphers and intellectual games. She set puzzles for her courtiers and they responded in kind. On one occasion her Secretary of State, William Cecil, wrote to his son Robert – the owner of this picture – about an “Allegorical Letter” which he had challenged her to decipher. He had been impressed by the speed with which she solved its meaning: “I think never a lady … nor a decipherer in the court would have dissolved the figure as Her Majesty hath done.”

The first modern historian to attempt to crack the code of The Rainbow Portrait was Frances Yates. She found keys to its meaning in Cesare Ripa’s late sixteenth-century Iconologia, a popular handbook of symbols, allegories and emblems. Yates noted the strong resemblance between Elizabeth in the painting shown here and Fama, or Fame, which Ripa describes as a winged figure, “having as many eyes as she has feathers, also many mouths and ears.” So the eyes and ears on her cloak may symbolise Elizabeth’s Fame, which is flying through the world, seen and heard by multitudes.

Ripa’s book also includes a description of Intelligence represented by a woman holding a celestial or armillary sphere together with a serpent. Just above the serpent’s head embroidered on Elizabeth’s dress there is, indeed, an armillary sphere, encircled by the band of the zodiac. This unusual conjunction of symbols signifies that in order to understand the highest and most sublime things we must start on the ground, like the serpent.

The painting contains a multitude of other meaningful details. The pearls with which she is festooned allude to the unmarried queen’s virginity. The jewelled crescent moon in her head-dress identifies her with Diana, the chaste huntress. Her bodice, embroidered with pansies, honeysuckle and cowslips, recalls descriptions of Elizabeth in the work of contemporary poets, who compared her to Astraea, the Just Virgin of the Golden Age, a time of perpetual spring when the world was a meadow filled with wild flowers. She has brought a new Golden Age to England. Her most prominent symbolic attribute completes this pattern of associations. The rainbow, which comes after storms, signifies serenity and peace. “No rainbow without a sun”, reads the inscription above it. Elizabeth is, herself, the sun: the radiant centre of all, the unmoved mover.

All this is to see the picture simply as a courtly eulogy of the queen, but that may not be the end of its meaning. In 1986 Steven Dedijer, a Swedish expert in the history of intelligence, came up with a fascinating new theory, seeing the picture as a coded political statement about the importance of the Elizabethan secret service. Dedijer’s argument, which rests on the potential motives of Robert Cecil in commissioning the painting, seems fairly compelling to me.

During the 1590s Robert Cecil had taken over the management of an unparalleled network of spies and secret agents first established by Elizabeth’s “spymaster general”, Francis Walsingham. He was, in effect, one of the very first heads of what was eventually to become MI5. His principal strategy was aimed at averting all-out war with Catholic Europe. He used the intelligence gathered by agents all over Europe to foil attempts to invade England and to snuff out the many “popish” plots to assassinate the country’s resolutely Protestant queen. English intelligence was the envy of the world – it was said by one observer that thanks to her spies Elizabeth knew more about the composition of the armada than the King of Spain himself – and its effectiveness had transformed the fortunes of the nation. By 1600, the Catholic powers of Europe had largely given up their ideas of conquering the country; Elizabeth’s personal safety had been secured; and the nation was at peace with itself and its continental neighbours.

Steven Dedijer argues that The Rainbow Portrait celebrates the effectiveness of English espionage as well as hymning the praises of the queen. I think he is right. The eyes and ears on the queen’s cloak, in this interpretation, do not represent her Fame, but the British secret service that has protected her and given her political guidance. The hidden theme of the painting, the appropriately coded message concealed within the code of courtly praise of a monarch, is that peace and national security can only be guaranteed by the maintenance of a totally effective, all-seeing, all-hearing intelligence service. So although it might seem at first like a picture safely embalmed in the long-distant past it is, in fact, distinctly topical."

References:

• Williams, P. (1998) The later Tudors: England 1547-1603. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• jo, S. D. (2010) The Elizabethan world. Edited by Susan Doran and Norman Jones. New York: Taylor and Francis(Routledge).
• ITP 91: Elizabeth I: The rainbow portrait attributed to Isaac Oliver (no date) Available at: http://www.andrewgrahamdixon.com/archive/readArticle/245 (Accessed: 2015).
• gogm (2009) Grand ladies. Available at: http://www.gogmsite.net/the_late_farthingale_era_fr/minialbum_queen_elizabeth_o/1585_ermine_portrait_by_nic.html (Accessed: 2015).
• Portraiture of Elizabeth I of England (2015) in Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portraiture_of_Elizabeth_I_of_England (Accessed: 2015).
• Those Tudors! (2015) Available at: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/569494315359337304/ (Accessed: 2015).