The Owners of This Painting Thought It Was of an Anonymous Woman. Turns Out It’s a Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I From 1562—and It May Fetch £250,000 at Auction

Long thought to be an anonymous portrait, a painting of a woman
holding a rose is now said by Bonham’s auction house to be an early
portrait of the legendary English Queen Elizabeth I.

When a restorer who was assigned to clean what was thought to be
a seventeenth-century canvas removed overpainting on the face, the
familiar features of Queen Elizabeth came to light. Since then,
Bonham’s has consulted with experts at the Yale Center for British
Art, and is confident enough to put the painting up for auction
December 4 with an estimate of up to £250,000 (about $322,860). The
house is attributing the painting to the workshop of Netherlandish
painter Steven van der Meulen, and has dated the work to 1562.

Elizabeth I’s early years were “dogged with instability and
threats from home and abroad,” says Andrew McKenzie, director of
the house’s old masters department, in a statement. “From her
accession onwards, however, she and her court were acutely alive to
the importance and possibilities of presentation—we’d call it brand
management today—and this portrait is among the very first we know
that projects a new, approved image of the Queen.”

The last of the five monarchs of the House of Tudor, Elizabeth
reigned from 1558 to 1603. Despite being courted by Eric XIV of
Sweden; Archdukes Ferdinand and Charles of Austria; and Philip II
of Spain (the widower of her half-sister, Mary I, upon whose death
she ascended to the throne), she never married, and she became
referred to as the Virgin Queen.

Van der Meulen’s auction high was achieved at Sotheby’s London
in November 2007, when a full-length portrait of Elizabeth I sold
for $5.4 million. Just twenty-three canvases by van der Meulen have
come to auction; the Bonham’s work is his only other portrait of
the monarch.

The post The Owners of This Painting Thought It Was of an
Anonymous Woman. Turns Out It’s a Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I
From 1562—and It May Fetch £250,000 at Auction appeared first
on artnet News.