Queen Elizabeth I and Political Self-Fashioning

Queen Elizabeth I: The Pelican Portrait

During Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, portraiture functioned in social and political discourse as propaganda; it was a way of influencing public opinion and securing power and authority, rather than an art form. The surviving portraits of Queen Elizabeth I illustrate this idea and in fact, the portraits exude many of the same elements as Elizabeth’s own speeches. The portraits, as well as her speeches, had much to do with Queen Elizabeth’s political self-fashioning and therefore reveal much about the monarch’s qualities, or at least those qualities she wished to portray to her subjects.

For the purpose of this post, I’ll be looking at The Pelican Portrait, pictured above, and Queen Elizabeth’s speech to parliament on religion. In the Pelican Portrait, Elizabeth is very elaborately dressed; additionally, on either side of her are the French and English crowns. Therefore, from a first glance, the portrait is a clear display of Elizabeth’s right to power and her role as queen, rather than her role as head of the Church of England, which is the role she assumes in her speech to parliament. That is not to say, however, that the Portrait ignores that duty completely. In the portrait, Elizabeth’s dress is covered in pearls, a symbol of purity and spirituality, as well as a symbol of wisdom acquired by experience (Portraits of Queen ElizabethI). The cherries behind her ear are representative of her sexual purity and therefore qualify her as the spiritual leader of the country. These spiritual symbols make it clear that Queen Elizabeth wanted to secure her subjects’ faith in her as a religious leader.

Moreover, the Pelican Portrait shows the queen’s maternal love for her subjects, as does her speech. The pendant around Elizabeth’s neck in the portrait is a pelican, for which the portrait is obviously named. The pendant represents the queen’s selfless love for her subjects, because according to legend, the pelican cut its own breast to feed its children. Elizabeth’s speech to parliament exemplifies this idea in that she declares that she will depose her own clergy if they do not take their duties seriously enough, “I see many overbold with God Almighty, making too many subtile scannings of His blessed will.” (Queen Elizabeth I On Religion, 1585)  Elizabeth took her responsibility seriously, a fact of which she wanted her subjects to be aware, and is thus displayed in her wearing of the pelican pendant in several of her portraits.

Where the speech and portrait differ also has to do with the queen’s maternal qualities. In her portrait, which her subjects would’ve seen, her palm is facing upward and her fingers are soft, exuding a maternal, but confident softness. In her speech to parliament, though, the queen is strict and threatening.  Both aspects of the queen’s personality are maternal in that a mother is generally a tender and confident leader around her children, but toward those who might upset her children, she displays a fierce protectiveness. In this respect, both the portrait and the speech support the virgin queen’s fashioning herself a maternal figure for her subjects.