Five of the Best - National Portrait Gallery
From Elizabeth 1 to Diana and David Beckham - here's what to spot in this wonderful collection of faces
The National Portrait Gallery. The world’s first national gallery devoted to portraits. But where to start? With the permanent collection, it’s tempting to behave as if you were in Madame Tussaud’s and just clock famous people. But there is great art here, powerful and politically focused. Radical art, in fact. If you’ve never been to the NPG before, or always look at the same pictures, here’s my Five of the Best which might illuminate another facet of this engaging collection.
1. Elizabeth 1, the “Ditchley” Portrait (1592), Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
The array of Plantagenet/Tudor portraits at the NPG, from Richard III to Elizabeth, I is simply peerless. A devastating roll-call of hard faced, ruthless dictators, it is required viewing for anyone remotely interested in English history. Power exudes from them, while the splendour of the paintings themselves is unsurpassed in the building.
Possibly the greatest portrait of them all is of Elizabeth I standing on a globe of the world, in particular her domain of England and Wales. It is called the Ditchley portrait because she has her feet more or less on Ditchley House in Oxfordshire. This was the home of her former favourite, Henry Lee, who was the first to hold the office of the Queen’s Champion but who had offended the Virgin Queen by becoming “a stranger lady’s thrall”, and moving in with his mistress Anne Vasavour. In order to make amends, he held a giant pageant at his house in her honour. The picture seethes with images and messages of her grace and forgiveness, from the Latin inscriptions to the sun breaking through stormy clouds. The embroidery on her spectacular dress plays off references to the Tudor rose; the heart shaped ruff was pure artistic invention. Designers attempted to recreate it for Glenda Jackson in the 1971 film Elizabeth R and discovered it would be impossible to realise.