Elizabeth I:
Queen & Court
14th May - 10th July 2026
Open Mondays to Fridays from 9.30am to 6pm.
Admission is free and booking is not required.
18-19 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5LU
VIEW THE EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
The Times ★★★★★
‘Unmissable royal progress from passionate teen to Virgin Queen’
The Telegraph
‘Elizabeth I: Queen and Court brings together some truly outstanding Tudor works’
Elizabeth I: Queen and Court explores how portraiture shaped one of Britain’s most iconic reigns. Featuring outstanding Tudor works drawn from private collections, the exhibition includes the earliest surviving life-size, full-length portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, alongside portraits of some of the key figures from her close circle of courtiers and confidantes. These rarely seen paintings reveal how portraiture functioned as a tool of power and was used to project authority, secure allegiance, and, in rare cases, register dissent.
Crucially, the exhibition does not purely focus on members of the elite. In fact, it presents an exceptionally rare act of visual resistance: a concealed portrait of John Stubbs (c.1544-1589) the Buxton-born Puritan and seditionary, shown alongside his severed right hand, commemorating the punishment he suffered in 1579 for publishing a pamphlet criticising Queen Elizabeth I’s proposed marriage to the Roman Catholic Francis, Duke of Anjou (1555-1584). In a culture of meticulously managed loyalty to the Crown, the portrait of Stubbs stands apart, demonstrating that portraiture could, on occasion, quietly rebel.
Philip says, “We are very fortunate, through the generosity of our private lenders, to be able to assemble a cast of the key figures of the first Elizabethan age. Above all is the compelling presence of Elizabeth herself, who, working with the most resourceful artists of her time, continually reshaped her image to meet the monarchical ambitions of a single woman on a stage of extraordinary challenge.”
The exhibition is accompanied by an online publication featuring essays by Tudor historians Dr Elizabeth Goldring and Dr Christina Faraday.
Press
Artwork Highlight
English School
A concealed portrait of John Stubbs (Stubbes) (c. 1541-1590)
Speaking out against Queen Elizabeth I, especially on the fraught matters of marriage and succession, carried serious risks, as the sitter in this rare, concealed portrait discovered.
John Stubbs trained as a lawyer and possessed an enviable combination of wit, intelligence and social connections. Born around 1541, he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1555 before entering Lincoln’s Inn, where he moved among a circle of committed Puritans.[1] With friends such as Vincent Skinner and Michael Hickes – both of whom later became secretaries to William Cecil, Lord Burghley – he developed a reputation for his caustic criticism of the church. A particular objection of Stubbs and his peers lay with the retention of clerical vestments, which they viewed as dangerously reminiscent of Catholic tradition. These debates underpinned a broader appetite for reform and fuelled several pointed attacks on figures like Archbishop Parker, whose resistance to puritan concerns was a source of continued frustration. Stubbs’ family life also connected him firmly to the Puritan movement. His sister Alice married the prominent Puritan Thomas Cartwright (c.1535-1603), while Stubbs himself married Anne, widow of Christopher Sharnborne of Norfolk, sometime between 1575 and 1579.[2]
Stubbs practised law following his call to the bar in 1572, although by this stage, he had become better known for his fiery political views. There was one particular view, which he made public, on which his fame rests. In August 1579, he produced The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf, a vehement denunciation of Elizabeth’s proposed marriage to François, Duke of Anjou. His objections were framed in religious terms, asserting that it was against God’s law for a Protestant monarch to wed a Catholic, but the tract also directly challenged the arguments marshalled by Thomas Radclyffe, Earl of Sussex in favour of the match. It has been suggested that Stubbs was provided information on the proposal by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and Francis Walsingham, who were known dissenters of the marriage.[3] Elizabeth certainly believed that Stubbs was assisted in his endeavours by members of her court, and when questioned, Stubbs revealed that an unnamed councillor had advanced knowledge of his text but did nothing to prevent its publication.[4]
Regardless, Stubbs was the author, and his critique was bold, personal and deeply unwelcome. Elizabeth, already sensitive to public scrutiny of her marriage plans, was furious. A royal proclamation swiftly banned the pamphlet. The consequences were immediate and dramatic. On 13 October 1579, Stubbs, printer Hugh Singleton, and the MP William Page were arrested. Elizabeth initially demanded their execution, but they were instead tried under a revived statute aimed at sedition. When the jury refused to convict, the men were retried and sentenced to the brutal punishment of losing their right hands. The sentence was carried out in Westminster marketplace, where surgeons stood ready to prevent the men from bleeding to death. Stubbs’s remained composed and, prior to receiving his punishment, declared his loyalty to the Queen and lamented that she denied him mercy despite having pardoned more serious offences committed by others.
The antiquarian William Camden attended the gory event and later described how the spectators were ‘altogether silent, either out of horrour of this new and unwonted punishment, or else out of pity towards the man being of most honest and unblameable report, or else out of hatred of the marriage, which most men presaged would be the overthrow of religion.’[5] After the punishment was inflicted, Stubbs removed his hat with his left hand and shouted ‘god save the Queen’.[6]
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