Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T01:20:30.141Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Allegory, Absolutist Ideology, and the “Rainbow Portrait” of Queen Elizabeth I*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Daniel Fischlin
Daniel Fischlin*
Affiliation:
The University of Guelph
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is somewhat surprising, given the nature of royal investment in various forms of political and religious iconography associated with Renaissance portraiture, that the well-known “Rainbow Portrait” (c. 1600-03; fig. 1) of Queen Elizabeth I, held by Robert Cecil, Lord of Salisbury at Hatfield House, but of unknown provenance, has not received sufficient attention to its political allegories. Much has been made of the religious symbolism associated with the portrait, especially by René Graziani, who argues, for example, that “Elizabeth wears the gauntlet on her ruff in right of her title, Fidei Defensor, official champion of the Christian religion” (255), and that the hair style of the Queen with its “Thessalonian bride allusion … [contributes] to the sponsa Dei theme” (259).

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , Spring 1997 , pp. 175 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am indebted to Ann Rosalind Jones, Julia Burnside, and Leslie Marshall for their help in locating some obscure references at a late stage in the writing of this essay. I also wish to thank Andrew Taylor for his perspicuous comments on my argument.

References

Almack, Edward, ed. Eikon Basilike, or The King's Book. London, 1904.Google Scholar
Archer, John M. Sovereignty and Intelligence: Spying and Court Culture in the English Renaissance. Stanford, 1993.Google Scholar
Arnold, Janet. Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd. London, 1988.Google Scholar
Auerbach, Erna and Adams, C. Kingsley. Paintings and Sculpture at Hatfield House. London, 1971.Google Scholar
Barkan, Leonard. “Making Pictures Speak: Renaissance Art, Elizabethan Literature, Modern Scholarship.” Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995): 326–51.10.2307/2863068Google Scholar
Barker, Francis. The Tremulous Private Body: Essays on Subjection. Ann Arbor, 1995.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Trans. Howard, Richard. New York, 1991.Google Scholar
Belsey, Andrew and Belsey, Catherine. “Icons of Divinity: Portraits of Elizabeth I.” In Renaissance Bodies: The Human Figure in English Culture c. 1540-1660, 11–35. Eds. Gent, Lucy and Llewellyn, Nigel. London, 1990.Google Scholar
Berry, Philippa. Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen. London, 1989.Google Scholar
Breitenberg, Mark. “‘ … the hole matter opened’: Iconic Representation and Interpretation in ‘The Quenes Majesties Passage.’.” Criticism 28 (1986): 1–26.Google Scholar
Bruce, John. Ed. Letters of Queen Elizabeth and King James VI of Scotland. London, 1849.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. Trans. Johnson, Barbara. Chicago, 1981.Google Scholar
Diehl, Huston. An Index of Icons in English Emblem Boob 1500-1700. Norman, 1986.Google Scholar
Erler, Mary C. “Sir John Davies and the Rainbow Portrait of Queen Elizabeth.” Modem Philology 84 (1987): 359–71.10.1086/391571Google Scholar
Fineman, Joel. The Subjectivity Effect in Western Literary Tradition: Essays Toward the Release of Shakespeare's Will. Cambridge, MA, 1991.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Sheridan, Alan. New York, 1979.Google Scholar
Frye, Susan. Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation. New York, 1993.Google Scholar
Graziani, René. “The ‘Rainbow Portrait’ of Queen Elizabeth I and its Religious Symbolism.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 35 (1972): 247–59.10.2307/750931Google Scholar
Hackett, Helen. Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary. New York, 1995.Google Scholar
Hazard, Mary E. “The Case for ‘Case’ in Reading Elizabethan Portraits.” Mosaic 23 (1990): 61–88.Google Scholar
Heisch, Allison. “Queen Elizabeth I: Parliamentary Rhetoric and the Exercise of Power.” Signs 1 (1975): 31-56.10.1086/493204Google Scholar
Hilliard, Nicholas. Art of Limning. Trans. Kinney, Arthur F.; comment, and apparat., Salamon, Linda Bradley; forwd. SirPope-Hennessy, John. Boston, 1983.Google Scholar
James, I. Basilikon Down. The Workes. Hildesheim, 137-92.Google Scholar
Jordan, Constance. “Representing Political Androgyny: More on the Siena Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I.” In The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon, 157-76. Eds. Haselkorn, Anne M. and Travitsky, Betty S.. Amherst, 1990.Google Scholar
Kantorowicz, Ernst H. The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology. Princeton, 1957.Google Scholar
Kapp, Elinor. “Elizabeth I of England.” Psychiatric Bulletin 19 (1995): 307-08.10.1192/pb.19.5.307Google Scholar
Kelley, Francis M. “Queen Elizabeth and her Dresses.” Connoisseur 113 (June 1944): 71–79.Google Scholar
King, John N. “The Godly Woman in Elizabethan Iconography.” Renaissance Quarterly 38 (1985): 41–84.10.2307/2861331Google Scholar
King, John N. “Queen Elizabeth I: Representations of the Virgin Queen.” Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990): 30–74.Google Scholar
Levin, Carole. “The Heart and Stomach of a King”: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power. Philadelphia, 1994.Google Scholar
May, Steven W. “Recent Studies in Elizabeth I.” English Literary Renaissance 23 (1993): 345–54.10.1111/j.1475-6757.1993.tb01065.xGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, W.J.T. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago, 1986.10.7208/chicago/9780226148052.001.0001Google Scholar
Montrose, Louis Adrian. “The Elizabethan Subject and the Spenserian Text.” Literary Theory/Renaissance Texts, 303-40. Eds. Parker, Patricia and Quint, David. Baltimore, 1986.Google Scholar
Neill, Michael. “Broken English and Broken Irish: Nation, Language, and the Optic of Power in Shakespeare's Histories.” Shakespeare Quarterly 45 (1994): 1–32.10.2307/2871290Google Scholar
Patterson, Annabel. “Back by Popular Demand: The Two Versions of Henry V .” Renaissance Drama, n.s. 19 (1988): 29–62.10.1086/rd.19.41917429Google Scholar
Pomeroy, Elizabeth W. Reading the Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I. Hamden, CT, 1989.Google Scholar
Pye, Christopher. The Regal Phantasm: Shakespeare and the Politics of Spectacle. London, 1990.Google Scholar
Ripa, Cesare. Iconologia (1603). Intro. Orgel, Stephen. New York, 1976.Google Scholar
Roper, Lyndal. Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe. London, 1994.Google Scholar
Strong, Roy. Holbein and Henry VIII. London, 1966.Google Scholar
Strong, Roy. “Elizabeth I: The Rainbow Portrait.” The Treasure Houses of Britain: Five Hundred Years of Private Patronage and Art Collecting, 122. Ed. Jackson-Stops, Gervase. New Haven, 1985.Google Scholar
Strong, Roy. Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I. London, 1987.Google Scholar
Leonard, Tennenhouse. Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare's Genres. New York, 1986.Google Scholar
Yates, Frances. Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century. London, 1985.Google Scholar
Yuasa, Nobuyuki. “She is All Eyes and Ears: A Study of the Rainbow Portrait of Queen Elizabeth.” Poetry and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare: Essays in Honour of Professor Shonosuke Ishii's Seventieth Birthday, 1–14. Eds. Milward, Peter and Anzai, Tetsuo. Renaissance Monographs 9. Tokyo, 1982.Google Scholar