I call God to record that as a private person, I have done nothing [unbecoming to] an honest man. Nor, as I bear the place of a public man, have I done anything unworthy … I confess that being very careful for the safety of the Queen and realm, I have curiously searched out practices against the same.’SIR FRANCIS WALSINGHAM, AT THE TRIAL OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, 14 OCTOBER, 1586.1It is his dark, deepset eyes that immediately arrest your attention. Staring out of the painting, they seem hooded, thoughtful, even quizzical, as if they seek to peer directly into the viewer’s mind, mercilessly probing and exploring one’s most private thoughts and innermost emotions. The portrait of Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I’s principal Secretary of State, painted around 1587 probably by the fashionable artist John De Critz the Elder,2 is an uncompromising study of an equally uncompromising man. More than four centuries later, the authority and intense energy of his personality, captured by this stark, dour likeness, remain wholly undiminished.
