In 2004, for example, Chris Levine was commissioned by the Jersey Heritage Trust to make a portrait of her to celebrate the island’s 800-year loyalty to the Crown. As she got older she certainly seems to have been game for increasingly experimental works. What the Queen herself thought of the images made of her remained unknown. The result is a benign monarch, almost off-duty and exuding good humour. His intention, he said, was “to play down the remoteness of Her Majesty’s special position”, so he showed her close up in a yellow dress (in the Yellow Drawing Room) with one of her corgis, Spark – hence the painting’s alternative title of “Corgi and Bess”. Leonard took 100 photographs in Buckingham Palace and used a combination of six for the final work. It is an exercise in comforting realism by an artist who trained as an illustrator, which is why it is based on photographs rather than face to face sittings. Less divisive – and less formal – was Michael Leonard’s 1985-86 portrait, commissioned by Reader’s Digest magazine to mark the Queen’s 60th birthday. She is a 70-year-old woman with poise and bearing.” Not everyone agreed, however, and his jowly version of the Queen ruffled feathers (a taster of the opprobrium lobbed at his 2021 statue of Princess Diana in Kensington Palace in London). Rank-Broadley, who made the 1998 image for the new, smaller coinage, perfected his profile on an 18-inch plaster disc and believed his job was to produce a true portrait and that there was: “no need to disguise the matureness of the Queen’s years. Rachel Taylor The first portrait of Elizabeth II as crowned Queen. Science and Technical Research and Development.Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities.Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives.Information and Communications Technology.HR, Training and Organisational Development.Health - Medical and Nursing Management.Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance.The pictures – whether successful or maladroit – trace not just the roll of her 70 years on the throne but changing attitudes in both art and deference. Nor did she have her own Titian or Lawrence but sat for more portraitists, of very different degrees of competence, than almost all of her forebears. As the most photographed woman of the age it was the camera that disseminated her features not the brush. Queen Elizabeth II did not need portraitists in the same way. In fixing the image of their rulers for eternity, the painters added lustre to both their names. Charles V had Titian, Pope Julius II – a spiritual king – had Raphael, Philip IV of Spain had Velázquez, Charles I had Van Dyck, Charles IV of Spain had Goya, Napoleon had Jacques-Louis David, George IV had Thomas Lawrence. Kings, queens and emperors have always needed their artists, sometimes more than the artists needed them. According to the 17th-century biographer Carlo Ridolfi: “Titian protested, saying: ‘Sire, I am not worthy of such a servant.’ To which the emperor replied: ‘Titian is worthy to be served by Caesar.’” This courtly exchange exemplifies the symbiotic relationship between monarchy and portraiture. Through nerves or clumsiness, however, Titian dropped a brush and, to his bewilderment, the emperor stooped and picked it up for him. In late 1548, Titian readied himself to paint the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the most powerful monarch in Europe.
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