I'm Dora Thornton,
I'm the curator of Renaissance Europe
Welcome to my corner.
I'm here with a very small but special selection of jewels
with miniature portraits of Elizabeth the first as Queen of England
when we think of Elizabeth we tend to think of the huge emblematic
political portraits but these objects although they are small
still carry a considerable political punch.
So I thought I'd start with a silver medal
which is perhaps the most complex of the lot
On the front is a three quarter elaborate portrait of Elizabeth as Queen
and she's wearing a lace ruff, a tight bodice
and fantastic jewels over her breast
showing, indeed, how a jewel like this was
intended to be worn and huge silk sleeves.
She's wearing the open crown, the Tudor crown on her head
and the crown breaks into the Latin legend or inscription
which goes all the way around and says
'No circle in the world is richer'
and the impression given there is that England
is not only a stable and secure monarchy
but it is also very rich and has imperial ambitions
to encompass the world's wealth.
On the other side of the medal
there is a message showing how Elizabeth identifies
herself with her people
and how she is their political salvation
It's a beautiful, beautiful image
surrounded with a laurel wreath
and it shows a single island in the middle
of a stormy sea with ships on it
and the island has one single tree growing on it
a bay tree, which is thought to be impervious to lightning
and that's exactly what's happening out of the stormy sky
a bolt of lightning is hitting the tree
and the tree is surviving and not bursting into flames
and underneath the tree is a message
'not even danger affects it'
You're supposed to think of this tree as Elizabeth herself
impervious to danger, the great survivor
of political troubles, of conspiracies inside her country
and a foreign invasion culminating in the Spanish Armada of 1588
and just to make that message clear
on either sides of the bay tree is
the Royal mark monogrammed
ER Elisabetha Regina, Queen Elizabeth
and so this medal is known as a danger averted medal,
it's designed by Nicholas Hilliard who was the great court artist
at the court of Queen Elizabeth
a medalist and a painter and miniaturist
and designed to be worn just to show
our debt to the Queen and the way she identifies herself
with the survival and the safety of her people.
The second medal is really rather different, this is gold,
it's also designed by Nicholas Hilliard, the great miniaturist and medalist,
and judging by the style of her dress it's probably from around 1570 to 80
and here, the exquisitely chased gold portrait,
has been cut out to form a silhouette
and every detail of the Queen's dress is lovingly picked out and chased
and worked in the gold to give different subtle differences of texture.
So you see her extraordinarily large velvet sleeves
the way her corset pushes her breasts up 'neath her lawn chemise
the wonderful ruffles of her stiff lace collar
and the beautiful braiding of her hair
also the smoothness and sharp profiling of her face.
Around her is a beautiful enameled gold frame
with entwined roses, white and red.
The Roses of York and Lancaster,
the Tudor roses and those are symbolic of the unity
that her grandfather Henry the seventh brought to England
with the Tudor dynasty, after a century of Civil War.
When you turn it over, against the profile of the Queen on the back
is the open crown of the Tudors and beneath that the monogram of the Queen
which spells out every letter in her name
but the most beautiful detail of all is the Phoenix
fluttering sensuously out of the flames.
The Phoenix was a legendary female creature
that had the capacity to regenerate itself
it would periodically burst into flames
and then regenerate itself out of its own ashes
but the Phoenix was also associated with
chastity and that was a real problem
because Elizabeth apart from being a female ruler
which was considered a great disadvantage at the time
was also unmarried and didn't have a natural successor.
But she made a great strength out of her virginity
in fact she claims she was in some way
mystically married to her subjects
and that reigning with their loves as she
called it was more precious to her than the most precious jewel.
We then have three really interesting jewels,
fashion accessories made out of miniature portraits of the Queen.
These are engraved into onyx, which is a stone
which has many different horizontal layers within it
ranging from whites on the uppermost layer
to brown black in the lower most layer
it's almost as if you were bringing out the portrait of the Queen
that's somehow hidden within the stone.
So there's something rather miraculous going on with these miniature portraits.
This one, the smallest one, has been fashioned
into a ring, a very, very beautiful gold ring of the late 16th century
and so it's an obviously intended to be worn at court or by a courtier
as this is something that has been given by the Queen as a token of favour.
We know from John Evelyn's diary in 1654
that he met one of Elizabeth the first's court musicians
a man called Jerome Lanier
and that Jerome Lanier was then wearing a ring just like this one
still remembering and celebrating Elizabeth 50 years after her death.
And I think that gives you an idea of the power of these images
however small they may seem to us.
So what we can see at work here is a queen
who's very aware of the importance of manipulating her own image
as a female ruler in a man's world.
Like Shakespeare the great playwright of her age
she knew that 'all the world's a stage'
in fact she actually said that she was very well aware
that rulers particularly were continually performing and in the eyes of their public.
And that's I think one thing that makes these jewels so moving
they are power tools but they're also very intimate
and they're intended to build a personal
relationship between you and the Queen.
If you'd like to come and see these jewels for yourself
they're normally displayed in gallery 46
Europe 15th to 18th centuries