An unmissable look at the Virgin Queen The Times | By Kate Maltby
Elizabeth I: Queen & Court review — an unmissable look at the Virgin Queen
Philip Mould, the face of the BBC’s Fake or Fortune?, has secured the loan of some exceptional pieces usually hidden in private collections. The result will thrill Tudor fans
Was she or wasn’t she? The question that won’t go away about England’s only unmarried queen was whether the Virgin Queen really was a lifelong virgin. This compact but revelatory exhibition at Philip Mould & Company in London won’t answer that question, but it does demonstrate conclusively that early in her reign Elizabeth publicly pitched herself as ready for a future of marriage, sex and babies.
Walking down the staircase at Mould’s Pall Mall gallery, you’re confronted by an imposing line-up of four portraits of Elizabeth taking us from her teens to the cusp of her sixties. The most colourful is the Hampden Portrait, which styles Elizabeth amid a profusion of fertility symbols indicating her willingness to find a husband and secure the Tudor dynasty. The portrait, by either the Flemish artist Steven van der Meulen or the Englishman George Gower, dates from 1563-67 when Elizabeth was in her early thirties. In 1563 she had promised her parliament that she would start seriously looking for suitors. Elizabeth is shown clutching a carnation — symbol of marriage — while behind her a lusciously green tapestry could be mistaken for a view onto a garden, patterned with pairs of fruit that hint at nature’s preference for coupling up.
