{"id":2869,"date":"2010-09-03T16:37:24","date_gmt":"2010-09-03T20:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=2869"},"modified":"2010-09-03T16:40:06","modified_gmt":"2010-09-03T20:40:06","slug":"coolest-old-english-people-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2010\/09\/coolest-old-english-people-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Coolest Old English People Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a former empire, the British sure do like to only acknowledge the wealthy white people who inhabit this relatively small island.\u00a0 The National Portrait Gallery was wall to wall dignified important white people.\u00a0 For the most part I did not come across images of other ethnicity or socio-economic class.\u00a0 Everywhere I turned I saw another sleepy-eyed English man or woman gazing down on me.\u00a0 While this lack of diversity was a little distressing (where was Gandhi!?\u00a0 He was a great subject of the British Empire!), once I got past this I loved every second of the National Portrait Gallery.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Image taken from Wikipedia<\/p>\n

I encountered my favorite painting early on — a magnificent portrait of Elizabeth I (1535-1603) by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger from 1592.\u00a0 This image of Elizabeth standing atop the world was a beautiful example of Elizabethan portraits.\u00a0 The Latin inscriptions (translated as “she gives and does not expect,” “she can but does not take vengeance,” and “in giving back she increases”) were fantastic examples of typical courtly sucking-up.\u00a0 I enjoyed these phrases in particular because Elizabeth was not known for her patience, humility, or charity.\u00a0 These stock sayings speak more to the traditions of the Early Modern Era than the character traits of this Tudor monarch.\u00a0 The other aspect of this portrait that caught my attention was her dress.\u00a0 This style of gown, a trademark of the later part of Elizabeth’s reign, is frequently referenced in modern culture, for example, the Fairy Queen in the last act of the Merry Wives of Windsor that we saw a few nights ago wore a replica of the gown in this portrait.\u00a0 That this style, which appeared very late in her reign, has become a byword for Elizabethan fashion seized my attention.\u00a0 I had not realized that by the time this portrait was painted, Elizabeth was old and no longer appeared like the young flawless beauty seen in this portrait:\u00a0 instead of porcelain skin she was pock-marked, instead of brilliant red-hair she was going gray.\u00a0 I found this distortion of truth, particularly highlighted by the exhibit itself (this portrait appeared at the end of a series illustrating Elizabeth through her lifetime), fascinating.\u00a0 All in all I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to the past at the National Portrait Gallery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a former empire, the British sure do like to only acknowledge the wealthy white people who inhabit this relatively small island.\u00a0 The National Portrait Gallery was wall to wall dignified important white people.\u00a0 For the most part I did not come across images of other ethnicity or socio-economic class.\u00a0 Everywhere I turned I saw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":446,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6678,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010-amy","category-museums"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/446"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}