Image: Illuminated membrane, with portrait of Elizabeth, 1584

Description: Illuminated initial membrane, with portrait of Elizabeth I, Court of King's Bench: Coram Rege Roll (Easter Term, 1584). The King's Bench was the senior common law court until 1875, dealing with crimninal offences. The decorative initial P was the "Placita" (plea) put before the queen. The portraits were commissioned by court officials from artists and are unique, though they came to follow a standard design. Art historian Erna Auerbach pointed out that this roll shows a new type of the queen's portrait on a highly decorative top membrane. The Roman P is decorated with black arabesques on a mauve ground within golden bands and intersected by two royal blue roundels with fleur de lys and portcullis. The queen's face is conventional rather than portrait-like and is represented in sharp lines. Auerbach speculatively identifies the draughtsmanship with George Gower: "This portrait on the Easter Roll of 1584 is of outstanding importance, for with it artistic experiment came to an end. The year 1584 is a significant date. It was the year in which the monopoly of royal portraiture was drafted in favour of Gower and Hilliard. Though, in this monopoly, the province of limning was assigned to Hilliard, it must be admitted that the treatment of the limning on the Plea Rolls of 1584 suggest Gower's manner rather than Hilliard's. And, in fact, a comparison of the Queen's portrait with the painting of Lady Kytson by Gower shows undoubted similarities in the rather dry and linear conception of the face and the pattern of the material". (Reference: Erna Auerbach, Tudor Artists: A Study of Painters in the Royal Service and of Portraiture on Illuminated Documents from the Accession of Henry VIII to the Death of Elizabeth I, London: Athlone Press, 1954, pp. 129–30.)
Title: Illuminated membrane, with portrait of Elizabeth, 1584
Credit: David Loades, Elizabeth I: The Golden Reign of Gloriana, London: National Archives, 2003, ISBN 1903365430.
Author: Uploaded by qp10qp.
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
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