From the Folger
Without question the Sieve Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I is the
most glorious painting in the Folger art
collection. Its visual splendor, iconographic significance and powerful capturing
of a charismatic subject guarantee it center stage in our upcoming spring exhibit,
which commemorates the 400th anniversary
of Elizabeth’s reign (1558-1603). One reason for emphasizing the Sieve
Portrait in this space (see also page 36) is that the portrait has an Amherst
connection, bequeathed to us by Francis T. P. Plimpton ’50 and received
at the library in 1997. The Folger conservators sent out the portrait for professional
cleaning so that years of varnish could be stripped away and the portrait’s
details revealed in their full splendor. In addition, they commissioned a new,
period-appropriate frame.
Painted in 1579 when Elizabeth was 46, the three-quarters-length portrait depicts
the queen in what seems to me a somber or reflective mood. Her skin is pale
(as usual in her portraits), her face showing little emotion, with her head
turned to the viewer’s right. The painting’s visual splendor comes
from the vivid play of red, white and black—the red of Elizabeth’s
hair, picked up in the rich red velvet of her lavishly bejeweled gown, playing
against the delicate tracery of the veil that falls from her jeweled headdress
and against the flat black background in which a shadowy globe is visible.
The painting’s informal title comes from the golden sieve the queen holds—somewhat
awkwardly—against the folds of her skirt.
The painting has long been a personal favorite of mine because I found in the
sieve an illustrative argument about
the iconography of female bodies that I described in my 1993 book, The Body
Embarrassed. There I argued that the sieve—known to allude to the myth
of the Roman vestal virgin Tuccia, who miraculously carried water in a sieve
from the Tiber to the Temple of Vesta—is a paradoxical symbol of Elizabeth’s
virginity. Full of holes, the sieve refers unmistakably to the symbolically
leaky, hence unreliable nature of ordinary women’s bodies even as it
asserts, through its link to Tuccia, the queen’s transcendence as virgin
monarch of ordinary women. For Elizabeth in her capacity as ruler, the sieve
is an emblem not of leakiness but of discernment, of the good judgment requisite
in rulers.
The Sieve Portrait is a fitting centerpiece for the Folger’s Great Hall
exhibition. Entitled “Elizabeth I: Then and Now,” the exhibit opened
to the public on March 21 and will run through August 2. Because of the Folger’s
rich holdings in Elizabeth materials (the richest in North America), we are
able to present a vivid documentary overview of this remarkable woman’s
accomplishments and career. The exhibit features several letters in the queen’s
own hand, including one in French to Henri IV and another to her cousin (and
successor) King James of Scotland. There is a letter to her from Robert Dudley,
earl of Leicester, one of her two great favorites, and a contemporary account
of the trial of her other
favorite, the ill-fated Robert Devereux, earl of Essex. Because she called
Dudley “her eyes,” he affectionately inserts tiny eyebrows over
words with double “o’s” into his letters and tiny eyes before
his signature.
Other materials are less private, though no less fascinating, and reveal Elizabethan
culture’s almost obsessive fascination with its monarch—and the
fascination she has attracted ever since. The Folger owns Queen Elizabeth’s
own pulpit Bible, her royal seals and a number of royal proclamations. Books
in our collection include engravings in which the queen is depicted hunting,
picnicking with her court, or on royal progress through the countryside. But
because we are interested in tracking her symbolic afterlife as well, the exhibition
will close with contemporary images and artifacts about Queen Elizabeth, including
a Queen Elizabeth Barbie doll, complete with ruff and bright red hair, still
ensconced in her original box. The exhibition will be open to view during the
height of Washington’s tourist season, and we hope that members of the
Amherst community will find an opportunity to see for themselves. The Sieve
Portrait and other images from the exhibition can be viewed on the Folger
Website.
—Gail Kern Paster
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