Elizabethan Portraits

Elizabethan Portraits 

This portrait is interesting as Lady Kytson had to raise her arms up in order to ensure that her hat with its enormously high crown was included together with her intricately embroidered sleeved and the fashionable ruffs at her wrists in the painting. You can see that the ruffs are formed by pinching the material into figure eights. Her sleeves feature “black work” embroidery which was very fashionable showing flowers and geometric patterns under sheer oversleeves. Under her hat is red hair which may have been a wig, and is styled in a frizzy or tightly curled way as was the fashion.  

Lady Kytson 1573

Another portrait of an upper-class lady in the Elizabethan period. Again with the curled frizzy red hair that was so popular under a black hat with a high crown decorated with pearls, gold buttons and a feather which may have been an ostrich feather at the side with another gold decoration. This time, her neck ruff is not so stiff looking and appears much lighter possibly made of lace. She is wearing a black and orange dress with a Renaissance pendant in the form of a dove and a snake emblem of mildness and prudence and a parrot on ropes of pearls that is worn over her right shoulder and under her left arm.

The Renaissance period is described as being between the 14^th and 16^th century which marks the end of the medieval period. It was the time of learning and great art from Michelangelo, Leonard de Vinci and Raphael.

Elizabeth Knollys (b1549)