Customer Reviews

Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I

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I really liked this book! I enjoy reading about and researching the Tudors (by researching, I mean reading existing research). I have a book "All the Queen's Men: Elizabeth and her Courtiers" by Neville Williams. I loved the reproductions of paintings in that book, and so tracked down "Gloriana" to see and compare as many pictures of Elizabeth as I could. I must say the pictures are great, and plentiful. The text is well written too. It describes the art and explains the purpose of and evolution of the stylised portraits of Elizabeth. It's not the book's fault, but it was missing some things I hoped to find, as follows: few pictures of those close to Elizabeth (I shouldn't probably have expected this, but I like to look for family resemblances, and the looks of her suitors!); little text description of Elizabeth (based on the author's reseach, I hoped he'd tell us whether her eyes were blue or brown, how tall she was etc. Hard to tell from the art - the colors and proportions vary); and finally, some portraits that are described in the text are not illustrated. Not many, but I wanted to see more. That being said, you can't go wrong with this book if you want to study the portraits. I am very pleased to have this as part of my little Tudor library! (My copy is paperback, I have not seen the hardback.)

Love this book. The scholarship. The comprehensive overview and chronology. Wish there were more in the color section, but hey, this book is a gift to anyone who wants to find out how the image of Elizabeth I evolved and why. You can just feel Her Majesty's strategy unveiled as you go along. All hail Gloriana!