Tudor Royal Propaganda at the NPG

A room for the dynasty that invented the propaganda portrait

Room 1 brings together the Tudor monarchs and their circle, from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I, at a time when the royal portrait was never a simple likeness: every detail — posture, objects, Latin inscriptions — was calculated to carry a precise political message to anyone who knew how to read it.

1. The Ditchley portrait: forgiveness painted at grand scale

The so-called "Ditchley" portrait of Elizabeth I, painted around 1592 by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, shows the queen standing on a map of England, her feet planted precisely on Oxfordshire. The sky behind her is split in two: a dark storm on the left, a bright clearing on the right, exactly in line with her face. The painting was probably commissioned by the courtier Sir Henry Lee to commemorate a celebration held in the queen's honour in September 1592, intended to secure her forgiveness after he had taken a mistress without her approval.

Three Latin mottoes painted on the canvas sum up the message: she gives and does not expect in return, she can take revenge but does not, in forgiving she grows still greater. The queen herself becomes the allegory of royal forgiveness here — a use of the image far more sophisticated than a simple court portrait.

2. Cromwell painted after Holbein: power without a smile

The portrait of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's most powerful minister before his fall and execution in 1540, derives from an original by Hans Holbein the Younger painted around 1532-1533 — the version held at the National Portrait Gallery is an early copy, made at the very start of the seventeenth century after that prototype. Cromwell appears in three-quarter view, dressed in black, his face closed and his hands occupied with state papers: the image of a man whose authority comes from administration rather than birth.

Hung in the same room as the flamboyant queen of the Ditchley portrait, this portrait shows the other side of Tudor power: the quieter, equally ruthless side of the men who kept the state running behind the throne.

3. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, before the fall

This portrait of Henry VIII, painted around 1520 by an anonymous Anglo-Netherlandish artist, shows the king well before Holbein's arrival in England, while he was still married to Catherine of Aragon — a younger, slimmer face than the massive one Holbein would later make famous, but already recognisable by his long nose and small, very blue eyes. An X-ray has revealed that at some point during painting, the very shape of his face was altered by the artist.

The portrait of Anne Boleyn held here is a late sixteenth-century copy, made after her death, of an original painted during the queen's lifetime between 1533 and 1536 and now lost. It is this type of portrait, reproduced in several copies after her execution in 1536, that has fixed for posterity the only face by which she is known — no portrait made during her lifetime, other than that vanished prototype, has survived.

4. Mary I and Elizabeth I, two crowned queens

The portrait of Mary I, painted in 1544 by an artist known only as "John" — the princess's accounts record a payment of five pounds to "one John that drew her grace in a table" — shows her still a princess, nine years before she became the first reigning queen of England in 1553, after ousting Lady Jane Grey.

The coronation portrait of Elizabeth I, painted around 1600, shows her crowned and wearing the cloth of gold she wore at her coronation on 15 January 1559 — a fabric that had previously belonged to Mary I herself. This late painting appears to be copied from a now-lost miniature painted shortly after the 1559 ceremony: as with Anne Boleyn, the image posterity retains of a defining moment of the reign survives only through a copy, the original having disappeared.

5. Edward VI, Katherine Parr and Thomas More, three more Tudor faces

The portrait of Edward VI, attributed to William Scrots and painted in 1546, when the future king was just nine, a year before his accession, uses anamorphosis: viewed head-on, the prince's face appears grotesquely elongated, but resolves into a normal shape when the painting is viewed almost edge-on, through a slot cut into the frame for that purpose, now lost. The portrait is already recorded at Whitehall by foreign visitors in the late sixteenth century, later stamped with Charles I's collector's mark, then sold in 1649 for two pounds when the royal collection was dispersed after his execution.

The portrait of Katherine Parr, attributed to Master John and painted around 1545, shows Henry VIII's sixth and last wife in a costume rendered with silver and gold leaf, glazes and oil paint imitating rich fabric. The painting was long misidentified as a portrait of Lady Jane Grey; the current identification as Katherine Parr rests partly on a crown-shaped brooch that matches an inventory of her jewels.

The portrait of Thomas More, painted at the very start of the seventeenth century after a 1527 original by Hans Holbein the Younger, is a high-quality version of the portrait held at the Frick Collection in New York; technical analysis suggests it was likely painted in Italy or Austria, far from Holbein's London workshop.

How much time

Look for the three Latin mottoes on the Ditchley portrait before moving through the four other Tudor monarchs that surround it in the same room.

The Ditchley portrait of Elizabeth I — 9 minutes.
Thomas Cromwell (after Holbein) — 6 minutes.
Henry VIII (c.1520) — 6 minutes.
Anne Boleyn — 7 minutes.
Mary I (by John, 1544) — 6 minutes.
The coronation portrait of Elizabeth I — 6 minutes.
Edward VI (anamorphic portrait) — 7 minutes.
Katherine Parr — 6 minutes.
Thomas More (after Holbein) — 7 minutes.

Sources and verification

Checked against the official notices of the National Portrait Gallery (npg.org.uk) and cross-checked with Wikipedia EN/FR.

Displays and room openings can change. Check the National Portrait Gallery website on the day of your visit before following a route.

Continue your visit

National Portrait Gallery, London

The Churchill portrait his wife destroyed A burned Churchill portrait, and Bacon’s small triptych of Lucian Freud. The faces of the Enlightenment Newton, Locke, Swift and Hogarth in a single room.

Listen to the commentary in the gallery

This route gives you a thread to follow. In front of an artwork, CulturAll adds the audio commentary: photograph the work or its label, listen, then ask your questions.

The portrait that invented English royal propaganda