Armada Portrait. The Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I of England is the name of any of three surviving versions of an allegorical panel painting depicting the Tudor queen surrounded by symbols of imperial majesty against a backdrop representing the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
The combination of a life-sized portrait of Elizabeth I with a landscape format is quite unprecedented in her portraiture, although allegorical portraits in this format, such as the Family of Henry VIII: An Allegory of the Tudor Succession attributed to Lucas de Heere, pre-date the Armada Portrait. English art in this period was isolated from trends in Catholic Italy, and owed more to Flemish manuscript illumination and heraldic representation than to Renaissance ideas of unity in time and space in art.
The 'Armada Portrait' is no exception: the chair to the right is viewed from two different angles, as are the tables on the left, and the background shows two different stages in the defeat of the Armada. In the background view on the left, English fireships threaten the Spanish fleet, and on the right the ships are driven onto a rocky coast amid stormy seas by the Protestant Wind.
On a secondary level, these images show Elizabeth turning her back on storm and darkness while sunlight shines where she gazes, iconography that would be repeated in Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger's 1592 Ditchley portrait of the queen. The
The combination of a life-sized portrait of Elizabeth I with a landscape format is quite unprecedented in her portraiture, although allegorical portraits in this format, such as the Family of Henry VIII: An Allegory of the Tudor Succession attributed to Lucas de Heere, pre-date the Armada Portrait. English art in this period was isolated from trends in Catholic Italy, and owed more to Flemish manuscript illumination and heraldic representation than to Renaissance ideas of unity in time and space in art.
The 'Armada Portrait' is no exception: the chair to the right is viewed from two different angles, as are the tables on the left, and the background shows two different stages in the defeat of the Armada. In the background view on the left, English fireships threaten the Spanish fleet, and on the right the ships are driven onto a rocky coast amid stormy seas by the Protestant Wind.
On a secondary level, these images show Elizabeth turning her back on storm and darkness while sunlight shines where she gazes, iconography that would be repeated in Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger's 1592 Ditchley portrait of the queen. The
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