The Queen's Agent: Francis Walsingham At The Court Of Elizabeth I - Plot & Excerpts
The face is long and rather narrow, coming to a point in a closely trimmed beard. Frown lines have etched themselves into his forehead. Walsingham was in his early fifties when he sat for the painting, and no effort has been made to conceal the encroaching signs of age. The eye sockets are sunken, the dark hair receding under his scholar’s cap. A few streaks of silver fleck through his moustache. The fur trim on his black gown hints at a man who had begun to feel the cold. The obligatory starched ruff and fancy cuffs seem oddly out of place on a man like Walsingham; a photographer’s gimmick, grudgingly put on and quickly discarded. The only other adornment is a cameo of Queen Elizabeth, a symbol of his power but also a reminder of its ultimate source. The globes and guns and coats of arms crammed into more conventional portraits of Elizabethan courtiers have been deliberately left out of the frame. Instead the viewer’s attention is drawn inexorably to Walsingham’s eyes, watchful and piercingly blue.
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