The many faces of Elizabeth I paint a compelling portrait Country Life | By Carla Passino
May 14, 2026
Bountiful maiden or Virgin Queen: The many faces of Elizabeth I paint a compelling portrait
Elizabeth I forged her own myth through portraiture, as a new exhibition at the Philip Mould Gallery in London reveals
The Virgin Queen, the breaker of the Armada, the ruler with transatlantic ambitions: Elizabeth I knew how to project power through her portraits. Yet, before she became Gloriana, before she forged her own myth, she was a princess of uncertain standing — her place at her father’s Court dependent on his moods and whims — as well as a precocious scholar and gifted linguist who perhaps was even, to use a period-inappropriate word, a little nerdy.
Giving no sign of the forceful monarch she would become, she peers demurely, almost shyly, from a portrait made in about 1546, when she was 13, which will be on show in a Tudor portraiture exhibition at the Philip Mould Gallery, ‘Elizabeth I: Queen and Court’.
