Portrait of Elizabeth I of England

When this portrait was copied around 1582, Elizabeth had ruled England for more than 20 years and had turned her own image into an instrument of state. Painters at home worked from approved patterns, so her face aged slowly, if at all, into the pale mask of the Virgin Queen. That a version reached a Medici gallery in Florence shows how far that carefully managed likeness could travel. She was a Protestant queen in a Catholic century, excommunicated by Rome, and yet here she hangs among cardinals and popes. Six years after this date her ships would scatter the great fleet Philip II of Spain sent against her.