The cult of Elizabeth[edit]

The Ditchley Portrait, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, c.1592

The various threads of mythology and symbolism that created the iconography of Elizabeth I
combined into a tapestry of immense complexity in the years following the defeat of the Spanish
Armada. In poetry, portraiture and pageantry, the queen was celebrated as Astraea, the just
virgin, and simultaneously as Venus, the goddess of love. Another exaltation of the queen's
virgin purity identified her with the moon goddess who holds dominion over the waters. Sir
Walter Raleigh had begun to use Diana and later Cynthia as aliases for the queen in his poetry
around 1580, and images of Elizabeth with jewels in the shape of crescent moons or the
huntress's arrows begin to appear in portraiture around 1586 and multiply through the remainder
of the reign.[58] Courtiers wore the image of the Queen to signify their devotion, and had their
portraits painted wearing her colours of black and white. [59]
The Ditchley Portrait seems to have always been at the Oxfordshire home of Elizabeth's retired
Champion, Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley, and likely was painted for (or commemorates) her two-day
visit to Ditchley in 1592. The painting is attributed to Marcus Gheerearts the Younger, and was
almost certainly based on a sitting arranged by Lee, who was the painter's patron. In this image,
the queen stands on a map of England, her feet on Oxfordshire. The painting has been trimmed
and the background poorly repainted, so that the inscription and sonnet are incomplete. Storms
rage behind her while the sun shines before her, and she wears a jewel in the form of a celestial
or armillary sphere close to her left ear. Many versions of this painting were made, likely in
Gheeraerts' workshop, with the allegorical items removed and Elizabeth's features "softened"
from the stark realism of her face in the original. One of these was sent as a diplomatic gift to
the Grand Duke of Tuscany and is now in the Palazzo Pitti.[60]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portraiture_of_Elizabeth_I_of_England