Discussion
	Discuss the ways contemporary women leaders (e.g., Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Senator Hillary Clinton) portray themselves to the public. {Dis: Is image making still as central to politics today as it was in the time of Elizabeth I?} How is it similar? Different?

Elizabeth I, Queen of England, owed her ascent to the throne to neither husband nor son but to supporters who pressed her claim as daughter of Henry VIII. Not only was she the most powerful woman of her day, but she also broke new ground in image making, cultivating a system of self-portrayal that glorified her virginity as a key source of her power. Elizabeth knew that any woman, even a queen, was subject to her husband's authority, and that this situation was incompatible with her vision of herself as ruler of England. While acknowledging that even virginity implies a definition of self that is driven by one's relationship to men, Elizabeth included in portraits and decorative and commemorative pieces certain symbols that positioned her as a woman apart from the traditional subservience of woman to man.

Elizabeth's portrayals evolved dramatically over the course of her rule, charting her growing ease with expressing power on her own terms. In paintings from early in her reign, depictions of the queen are girlish, almost delicate, her figure nearly swallowed by the surrounding space. By contrast, on later official government documents, Elizabeth claims the traditional regalia for a male monarch: the scepter, the ermine robe, and the orb, symbol of world dominion. For state portraits, she negotiated with court artists the modes of self-presentation that would bring to the fore her projection as the Virgin Queen.

In this slideshow, consider the different ways in which Queen Elizabeth I represented herself.

In England, unlike France, women could inherit the throne from their fathers, but the idea of an unmarried female ruler was anomalous. Queen Elizabeth I of England solved this problem by publicly promoting her virginity--and her freedom from subordination to any man's authority--as a key source of her power. Daughter of the Tudor king Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth acceded to the throne after much struggle. She cultivated loyalty in her people, projecting an image of absolute power.

In creating an iconography of power, the queen, her court artists, and her supporters devised a variety of emblems invested with symbolic value (columns, a pelican, the mythical phoenix and a crescent moon) that extolled her chastity, charity and imperial ambitions. Artists also represented Elizabeth encased in garments encrusted with jewels, creating a sense of her magnificence as well as her inaccessibility. Such images appeared in paintings and prints, as well as in some of the medals, medallions and cameos that Elizabeth gave to her favorites. These keepsakes replaced badges representing the Virgin Mary worn earlier, as the cult of the virgin queen took the place of the Virgin--a useful appropriation by the new Protestant state of a comforting symbol of the deposed Catholic order.