Starkey on Royal Portraits

Channel 4 showed an excellent programme last night called "The Genius of British Art". It was presented by David Starkey and focused on royal portraiture, using Hans Holbein's images of the Tudors as its starting point to examine the way portraits have been used to convey power and other messages about the monarch to their viewers. The first 20 minutes are particularly worth watching, with some excellent analysis of portraits of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. You also get to see Starkey doing an impression of his old university tutor, the famously grumpy Geoffrey Elton.

Elizabeth Portraits

The Year 12s who visited the National Portrait Gallery yesterday will have seen two famous portraits of Elizabeth I which are rarely seen together. The Pelican (top picture) and Phoenix (bottom) portraits, painted in the 1570s when Elizabeth was in her 40s, have recently been proven to have been painted on wooden panels taken from the same trees, and so are most likely to have been painted by the same artist, Nicholas Hilliard. You can read more about how the paintings were researched here, but you only have till the end of the week if you want to see them together!

PS: Here are further details from the National Portrait Gallery and comments from Channel 4 News.