Elizabeth I and Her People, National Portrait Gallery

One of the largest exhibitions of Elizabethan portraiture, clothing, jewellery and crafts opens today at the National Portrait Gallery. Elizabeth I and Her People paints a picture of late-Tudor lives, times, and tastes through 100 artefacts – originating from the Royal Court to the houses of the men and women on the street.

In the course of Elizabeth’s 45-year reign (1558 – 1603) the frontiers of the early modern world were exploding. Suddenly at the forefront of maritime exploration and international trade, Elizabethan England was characterized by a proliferation of knowledge and wealth- and the emergence of a middle class who wanted to show both of them off.

Alongside portraits of the Virgin Queen herself, including a newly-rediscovered miniature by Isaac Oliver, and such big-names du jour as the metaphysical poet John Donne, Bess of Hardwick and Sir Francis Drake, the exhibition takes us into the homes of the ordinary people whose trades made the Elizabethan world go round. The period’s newly wealthy merchants, lawyers, butchers, calligraphers, writers and artists are depicted too among the fripperies, fineries and ephemera of their timber-and-brick homes.

Keep your eye out for the first known portrait of a guinea pig, dating from around 1580 when, having recently been brought back from South America by Spanish traders, these pets were the height of exoticism. If you’ve a keen eye for animals you can also feast it on an array of stags, dogs and falcons, and a miniature of Elizabeth with a peacock.

New discoveries have been coming thick and fast from the National Portrait Gallery team whilst preparing this exhibition over the past few months, so it’s an incredibly exciting time for Tudor research. Don’t miss this amazing opportunity to be one of the first to see the Elizabethans’ long-lost treasures.