Elizabethan

The term Elizabethan refers to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England from 1558 to 1603, an age of national self-confidence and flourishing of the arts. In the visual arts the period is defined above all by the development of portraiture, which acquired special importance as a means of asserting power, status and dynastic continuity. Portraits of the queen herself were deeply symbolic: pearls, roses, globes, ermine and other emblems embodied purity, might and dominion. The leading masters of the age were the miniaturists Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, whose exquisite portrait miniatures represented the summit of English art of the time. The style was marked by flatness, decorative meticulousness and attention to sumptuous fabrics, embroidery and jewels rather than to volumetric, realistic space. The Elizabethan era was also a golden age of English literature and theatre, the time of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. More broadly, the word describes the architecture, decorative arts and dress of the period, with their characteristic opulence and symbolic richness.