A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. It takes the form of a multicoloured circular arc. Rainbows caused by sunlight always appear in the section of sky directly opposite the sun.
Rainbows can be full circles. However, the observer normally sees only an arc formed by illuminated droplets above the ground,[1] and centered on a line from the sun to the observer's eye.
In a primary rainbow, the arc shows red on the outer part and violet on the inner side. This rainbow is caused by light being refracted when entering a droplet of water, then reflected inside on the back of the droplet and refracted again when leaving it.
In a double rainbow, a second arc is seen outside the primary arc, and has the order of its colours reversed, with red on the inner side of the arc. This is caused by the light being reflected twice on the inside of the droplet before leaving it.
- 4Explanation
- 5Variations
Overview
A rainbow is not located at a specific distance from the observer, but comes from an optical illusion caused by any water droplets viewed from a certain angle relative to a light source. Thus, a rainbow is not an object and cannot be physically approached. Indeed, it is impossible for an observer to see a rainbow from water droplets at any angle other than the customary one of 42 degrees from the direction opposite the light source. Even if an observer sees another observer who seems 'under' or 'at the end of' a rainbow, the second observer will see a different rainbow—farther off—at the same angle as seen by the first observer.
Rainbows span a continuous spectrum of colours. Any distinct bands perceived are an artefact of human colour vision, and no banding of any type is seen in a black-and-white photo of a rainbow, only a smooth gradation of intensity to a maximum, then fading towards the other side. For colours seen by the human eye, the most commonly cited and remembered sequence is Newton's sevenfold red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet,[2][3] remembered by the mnemonicRichard Of York Gave Battle In Vain (ROYGBIV).
Rainbows can be caused by many forms of airborne water. These include not only rain, but also mist, spray, and airborne dew.
Visibility
Rainbows can be observed whenever there are water drops in the air and sunlight shining from behind the observer at a low altitudeangle. Because of this, rainbows are usually seen in the western sky during the morning and in the eastern sky during the early evening. The most spectacular rainbow displays happen when half the sky is still dark with raining clouds and the observer is at a spot with clear sky in the direction of the sun. The result is a luminous rainbow that contrasts with the darkened background. During such good visibility conditions, the larger but fainter secondary rainbow is often visible. It appears about 10° outside of the primary rainbow, with inverse order of colours.
The rainbow effect is also commonly seen near waterfalls or fountains. In addition, the effect can be artificially created by dispersing water droplets into the air during a sunny day. Rarely, a moonbow, lunar rainbow or nighttime rainbow, can be seen on strongly moonlit nights. As human visual perception for colour is poor in low light, moonbows are often perceived to be white.[4]
Picture Of A Rainbow Unicorn
It is difficult to photograph the complete semicircle of a rainbow in one frame, as this would require an angle of view of 84°. For a 35 mm camera, a wide-angle lens with a focal length of 19 mm or less would be required. Now that software for stitching several images into a panorama is available, images of the entire arc and even secondary arcs can be created fairly easily from a series of overlapping frames.
From above the earth such as in an aeroplane, it is sometimes possible to see a rainbow as a full circle. This phenomenon can be confused with the glory phenomenon, but a glory is usually much smaller, covering only 5–20°.
The sky inside a primary rainbow is brighter than the sky outside of the bow. This is because each raindrop is a sphere and it scatters light over an entire circular disc in the sky. The radius of the disc depends on the wavelength of light, with red light being scattered over a larger angle than blue light. Over most of the disc, scattered light at all wavelengths overlaps, resulting in white light which brightens the sky. At the edge, the wavelength dependence of the scattering gives rise to the rainbow.[5]
Light of primary rainbow arc is 96% polarised tangential to the arch.[6] Light of second arc is 90% polarised.
Number of colours in spectrum or rainbow
A spectrum obtained using a glass prism and a point source is a continuum of wavelengths without bands. The number of colours that the human eye is able to distinguish in a spectrum is in the order of 100.[7] Accordingly, the Munsell colour system (a 20th-century system for numerically describing colours, based on equal steps for human visual perception) distinguishes 100 hues. The apparent discreteness of main colours is an artefact of human perception and the exact number of main colours is a somewhat arbitrary choice.
Red | Orange | Yellow | Green | Blue | Indigo | Violet |
Newton, who admitted his eyes were not very critical in distinguishing colours,[8] originally (1672) divided the spectrum into five main colours: red, yellow, green, blue and violet. Later he included orange and indigo, giving seven main colours by analogy to the number of notes in a musical scale.[2][9] Newton chose to divide the visible spectrum into seven colours out of a belief derived from the beliefs of the ancient Greeksophists, who thought there was a connection between the colours, the musical notes, the known objects in the Solar System, and the days of the week.[10][11][12] Scholars have noted that what Newton regarded at the time as 'blue' would today be regarded as cyan, and what Newton called 'indigo' would today be considered blue.[3]
Red | Orange | Yellow | Green | Cyan | Blue | Violet |
According to Isaac Asimov, 'It is customary to list indigo as a colour lying between blue and violet, but it has never seemed to me that indigo is worth the dignity of being considered a separate colour. To my eyes it seems merely deep blue.'[13]
The colour pattern of a rainbow is different from a spectrum, and the colours are less saturated. There is spectral smearing in a rainbow owing to the fact that for any particular wavelength, there is a distribution of exit angles, rather than a single unvarying angle.[14] In addition, a rainbow is a blurred version of the bow obtained from a point source, because the disk diameter of the sun (0.5°) cannot be neglected compared to the width of a rainbow (2°). The number of colour bands of a rainbow may therefore be different from the number of bands in a spectrum, especially if the droplets are particularly large or small. Therefore, the number of colours of a rainbow is variable. If, however, the word rainbow is used inaccurately to mean spectrum, it is the number of main colours in the spectrum.
The question of whether everyone sees seven colours in a rainbow is related to the idea of linguistic relativity. Suggestions have been made that there is universality in the way that a rainbow is perceived.[15][16] However, more recent research suggests that the number of distinct colours observed and what these are called depend on the language that one uses with people whose language has fewer colour words seeing fewer discrete colour bands.[17]
Explanation
When sunlight encounters a raindrop, part of the light is reflected and the rest enters the raindrop. The light is refracted at the surface of the raindrop. When this light hits the back of the raindrop, some of it is reflected off the back. When the internally reflected light reaches the surface again, once more some is internally reflected and some is refracted as it exits the drop. (The light that reflects off the drop, exits from the back, or continues to bounce around inside the drop after the second encounter with the surface, is not relevant to the formation of the primary rainbow.) The overall effect is that part of the incoming light is reflected back over the range of 0° to 42°, with the most intense light at 42°.[18] This angle is independent of the size of the drop, but does depend on its refractive index. Seawater has a higher refractive index than rain water, so the radius of a 'rainbow' in sea spray is smaller than a true rainbow. This is visible to the naked eye by a misalignment of these bows.[19]
The reason the returning light is most intense at about 42° is that this is a turning point – light hitting the outermost ring of the drop gets returned at less than 42°, as does the light hitting the drop nearer to its centre. There is a circular band of light that all gets returned right around 42°. If the sun were a laser emitting parallel, monochromatic rays, then the luminance (brightness) of the bow would tend toward infinity at this angle (ignoring interference effects). (See Caustic (optics).) But since the sun's luminance is finite and its rays are not all parallel (it covers about half a degree of the sky) the luminance does not go to infinity. Furthermore, the amount by which light is refracted depends upon its wavelength, and hence its colour. This effect is called dispersion. Blue light (shorter wavelength) is refracted at a greater angle than red light, but due to the reflection of light rays from the back of the droplet, the blue light emerges from the droplet at a smaller angle to the original incident white light ray than the red light. Due to this angle, blue is seen on the inside of the arc of the primary rainbow, and red on the outside. The result of this is not only to give different colours to different parts of the rainbow, but also to diminish the brightness. (A 'rainbow' formed by droplets of a liquid with no dispersion would be white, but brighter than a normal rainbow.)
The light at the back of the raindrop does not undergo total internal reflection, and some light does emerge from the back. However, light coming out the back of the raindrop does not create a rainbow between the observer and the sun because spectra emitted from the back of the raindrop do not have a maximum of intensity, as the other visible rainbows do, and thus the colours blend together rather than forming a rainbow.[20]
A rainbow does not exist at one particular location. Many rainbows exist; however, only one can be seen depending on the particular observer's viewpoint as droplets of light illuminated by the sun. All raindrops refract and reflect the sunlight in the same way, but only the light from some raindrops reaches the observer's eye. This light is what constitutes the rainbow for that observer. The whole system composed by the sun's rays, the observer's head, and the (spherical) water drops has an axial symmetry around the axis through the observer's head and parallel to the sun's rays. The rainbow is curved because the set of all the raindrops that have the right angle between the observer, the drop, and the sun, lie on a cone pointing at the sun with the observer at the tip. The base of the cone forms a circle at an angle of 40–42° to the line between the observer's head and their shadow but 50% or more of the circle is below the horizon, unless the observer is sufficiently far above the earth's surface to see it all, for example in an aeroplane (see above).[21][22] Alternatively, an observer with the right vantage point may see the full circle in a fountain or waterfall spray.[23]
Mathematical derivation
We can determine the perceived angle which the rainbow subtends as follows.[24]
Given a spherical raindrop, and defining the perceived angle of the rainbow as 2φ, and the angle of the internal reflection as 2β, then the angle of incidence of the sun's rays with respect to the drop's surface normal is 2β − φ. Since the angle of refraction is β, Snell's law gives us
- sin(2β − φ) = n sin β,
where n = 1.333 is the refractive index of water. Solving for φ, we get
- φ = 2β − arcsin(n sin β).
The rainbow will occur where the angle φ is maximum with respect to the angle β. Therefore, from calculus, we can set dφ/dβ = 0, and solve for β, which yields
- .
Substituting back into the earlier equation for φ yields 2φmax ≈ 42° as the radius angle of the rainbow.
Variations
Double rainbows
The term double rainbow is used when both the primary and secondary rainbows are visible. In theory, all rainbows are double rainbows, but since the secondary bow is always fainter than the primary, it may be too weak to spot in practice.
Secondary rainbows are caused by a double reflection of sunlight inside the water droplets. Technically the secondary bow is centred on the sun itself, but since its angular size is more than 90° (about 127° for violet to 130° for red), it is seen on the same side of the sky as the primary rainbow, about 10° outside it at an apparent angle of 50–53°. As a result of the 'inside' of the secondary bow being 'up' to the observer, the colours appear reversed compared to those of the primary bow.
The secondary rainbow is fainter than the primary because more light escapes from two reflections compared to one and because the rainbow itself is spread over a greater area of the sky. Each rainbow reflects white light inside its coloured bands, but that is 'down' for the primary and 'up' for the secondary.[26] The dark area of unlit sky lying between the primary and secondary bows is called Alexander's band, after Alexander of Aphrodisias who first described it.[27]
Twinned rainbow
Unlike a double rainbow that consists of two separate and concentric rainbow arcs, the very rare twinned rainbow appears as two rainbow arcs that split from a single base.[28] The colours in the second bow, rather than reversing as in a secondary rainbow, appear in the same order as the primary rainbow. A 'normal' secondary rainbow may be present as well. Twinned rainbows can look similar to, but should not be confused with supernumerary bands. The two phenomena may be told apart by their difference in colour profile: supernumerary bands consist of subdued pastel hues (mainly pink, purple and green), while the twinned rainbow shows the same spectrum as a regular rainbow.The cause of a twinned rainbow is the combination of different sizes of water drops falling from the sky. Due to air resistance, raindrops flatten as they fall, and flattening is more prominent in larger water drops. When two rain showers with different-sized raindrops combine, they each produce slightly different rainbows which may combine and form a twinned rainbow.[29]A numerical ray tracing study showed that a twinned rainbow on a photo could be explained by a mixture of 0.40 and 0.45 mm droplets. That small difference in droplet size resulted in a small difference in flattening of the droplet shape, and a large difference in flattening of the rainbow top.[30]
Meanwhile, the even rarer case of a rainbow split into three branches was observed and photographed in nature.[31]
Full-circle rainbow
In theory, every rainbow is a circle, but from the ground, usually only its upper half can be seen. Since the rainbow's centre is diametrically opposed to the sun's position in the sky, more of the circle comes into view as the sun approaches the horizon, meaning that the largest section of the circle normally seen is about 50% during sunset or sunrise. Viewing the rainbow's lower half requires the presence of water droplets below the observer's horizon, as well as sunlight that is able to reach them. These requirements are not usually met when the viewer is at ground level, either because droplets are absent in the required position, or because the sunlight is obstructed by the landscape behind the observer. From a high viewpoint such as a high building or an aircraft, however, the requirements can be met and the full-circle rainbow can be seen.[32][33] Like a partial rainbow, the circular rainbow can have a secondary bow or supernumerary bows as well.[34] It is possible to produce the full circle when standing on the ground, for example by spraying a water mist from a garden hose while facing away from the sun.[35]
A circular rainbow should not be confused with the glory, which is much smaller in diameter and is created by different optical processes. In the right circumstances, a glory and a (circular) rainbow or fog bow can occur together. Another atmospheric phenomenon that may be mistaken for a 'circular rainbow' is the 22° halo, which is caused by ice crystals rather than liquid water droplets, and is located around the sun (or moon), not opposite it.
Supernumerary rainbows
In certain circumstances, one or several narrow, faintly coloured bands can be seen bordering the violet edge of a rainbow; i.e., inside the primary bow or, much more rarely, outside the secondary. These extra bands are called supernumerary rainbows or supernumerary bands; together with the rainbow itself the phenomenon is also known as a stacker rainbow. The supernumerary bows are slightly detached from the main bow, become successively fainter along with their distance from it, and have pastel colours (consisting mainly of pink, purple and green hues) rather than the usual spectrum pattern.[36] The effect becomes apparent when water droplets are involved that have a diameter of about 1 mm or less; the smaller the droplets are, the broader the supernumerary bands become, and the less saturated their colours.[37] Due to their origin in small droplets, supernumerary bands tend to be particularly prominent in fogbows.[38]
Supernumerary rainbows cannot be explained using classical geometric optics. The alternating faint bands are caused by interference between rays of light following slightly different paths with slightly varying lengths within the raindrops. Some rays are in phase, reinforcing each other through constructive interference, creating a bright band; others are out of phase by up to half a wavelength, cancelling each other out through destructive interference, and creating a gap. Given the different angles of refraction for rays of different colours, the patterns of interference are slightly different for rays of different colours, so each bright band is differentiated in colour, creating a miniature rainbow. Supernumerary rainbows are clearest when raindrops are small and of uniform size. The very existence of supernumerary rainbows was historically a first indication of the wave nature of light, and the first explanation was provided by Thomas Young in 1804.[39]
Reflected rainbow, reflection rainbow
When a rainbow appears above a body of water, two complementary mirror bows may be seen below and above the horizon, originating from different light paths. Their names are slightly different.
A reflected rainbow may appear in the water surface below the horizon.[40] The sunlight is first deflected by the raindrops, and then reflected off the body of water, before reaching the observer. The reflected rainbow is frequently visible, at least partially, even in small puddles.
A reflection rainbow may be produced where sunlight reflects off a body of water before reaching the raindrops (see diagram and Reflection and reflected bows, Norway), if the water body is large, quiet over its entire surface, and close to the rain curtain. The reflection rainbow appears above the horizon. It intersects the normal rainbow at the horizon, and its arc reaches higher in the sky, with its centre as high above the horizon as the normal rainbow's centre is below it. Due to the combination of requirements, a reflection rainbow is rarely visible.
Up to eight separate bows may be distinguished if the reflected and reflection rainbows happen to occur simultaneously: The normal (non-reflection) primary and secondary bows above the horizon (1, 2) with their reflected counterparts below it (3, 4), and the reflection primary and secondary bows above the horizon (5, 6) with their reflected counterparts below it (7, 8).[41][42]
Monochrome rainbow
Occasionally a shower may happen at sunrise or sunset, where the shorter wavelengths like blue and green have been scattered and essentially removed from the spectrum. Further scattering may occur due to the rain, and the result can be the rare and dramatic monochrome or red rainbow.[43]
Higher-order rainbows
In addition to the common primary and secondary rainbows, it is also possible for rainbows of higher orders to form. The order of a rainbow is determined by the number of light reflections inside the water droplets that create it: One reflection results in the first-order or primary rainbow; two reflections create the second-order or secondary rainbow. More internal reflections cause bows of higher orders—theoretically unto infinity.[44] As more and more light is lost with each internal reflection, however, each subsequent bow becomes progressively dimmer and therefore increasingly harder to spot. An additional challenge in observing the third-order (or tertiary) and fourth-order (quaternary) rainbows is their location in the direction of the sun (about 40° and 45° from the sun, respectively), causing them to become drowned in its glare.[45]
For these reasons, naturally occurring rainbows of an order higher than 2 are rarely visible to the naked eye. Nevertheless, sightings of the third-order bow in nature have been reported, and in 2011 it was photographed definitively for the first time.[46][47] Shortly after, the fourth-order rainbow was photographed as well,[48][49] and in 2014 the first ever pictures of the fifth-order (or quinary) rainbow, located in between the primary and secondary bows, were published.[50]
In a laboratory setting, it is possible to create bows of much higher orders. Felix Billet (1808–1882) depicted angular positions up to the 19th-order rainbow, a pattern he called a 'rose of rainbows'.[51][52][53] In the laboratory, it is possible to observe higher-order rainbows by using extremely bright and well collimated light produced by lasers. Up to the 200th-order rainbow was reported by Ng et al. in 1998 using a similar method but an argon ion laser beam.[54]
Tertiary and quaternary rainbows should not be confused with 'triple' and 'quadruple' rainbows—terms sometimes erroneously used to refer to the—much more common—supernumerary bows and reflection rainbows.
Rainbows under moonlight
Like most atmospheric optical phenomena, rainbows can be caused by light from the Sun, but also from the Moon. In case of the latter, the rainbow is referred to as a lunar rainbow or moonbow. They are much dimmer and rarer than solar rainbows, requiring the Moon to be near-full in order for them to be seen. For the same reason, moonbows are often perceived as white and may be thought of as monochrome. The full spectrum is present, however, but the human eye is not normally sensitive enough to see the colours. Long exposure photographs will sometimes show the colour in this type of rainbow.[55]
Fogbow
Fogbows form in the same way as rainbows, but they are formed by much smaller cloud and fog droplets that diffract light extensively. They are almost white with faint reds on the outside and blues inside; often one or more broad supernumerary bands can be discerned inside the inner edge. The colours are dim because the bow in each colour is very broad and the colours overlap. Fogbows are commonly seen over water when air in contact with the cooler water is chilled, but they can be found anywhere if the fog is thin enough for the sun to shine through and the sun is fairly bright. They are very large—almost as big as a rainbow and much broader. They sometimes appear with a glory at the bow's centre.[56]
Fog bows should not be confused with ice halos, which are very common around the world and visible much more often than rainbows (of any order),[57] yet are unrelated to rainbows.
Circumhorizontal and circumzenithal arcs
The circumzenithal and circumhorizontal arcs are two related optical phenomena similar in appearance to a rainbow, but unlike the latter, their origin lies in light refraction through hexagonal ice crystals rather than liquid water droplets. This means that they are not rainbows, but members of the large family of halos. All chief keef albums in order.
Both arcs are brightly coloured ring segments centred on the zenith, but in different positions in the sky: The circumzenithal arc is notably curved and located high above the Sun (or Moon) with its convex side pointing downwards (creating the impression of an 'upside down rainbow'); the circumhorizontal arc runs much closer to the horizon, is more straight and located at a significant distance below the Sun (or Moon). Both arcs have their red side pointing towards the sun and their violet part away from it, meaning the circumzenithal arc is red on the bottom, while the circumhorizontal arc is red on top.[58][59]
The circumhorizontal arc is sometimes referred to by the misnomer 'fire rainbow'. In order to view it, the Sun or Moon must be at least 58° above the horizon, making it a rare occurrence at higher latitudes. The circumzenithal arc, visible only at a solar or lunar elevation of less than 32°, is much more common, but often missed since it occurs almost directly overhead.
Rainbows on Titan
It has been suggested that rainbows might exist on Saturn's moon Titan, as it has a wet surface and humid clouds. The radius of a Titan rainbow would be about 49° instead of 42°, because the fluid in that cold environment is methane instead of water. Although visible rainbows may be rare due to Titan's hazy skies, infrared rainbows may be more common, but an observer would need infrared night vision goggles to see them.[60]
Rainbows with different materials
Droplets (or spheres) composed of materials with different refractive indices than plain water produce rainbows with different radius angles. Since salt water has a higher refractive index, a sea spray bow doesn't perfectly align with the ordinary rainbow, if seen at the same spot.[61] Tiny plastic or glass marbles may be used in road marking as a reflectors to enhance its visibility by drivers at night. Due to a much higher refractive index, rainbows observed on such marbles have a noticeably smaller radius.[62] One can easily reproduce such phenomena by sprinkling liquids of different refractive indices in the air, as illustrated in the photo.
The displacement of the rainbow due to different refractive indices can be pushed to a peculiar limit. For a material with a refractive index larger than 2, there is no angle fulfilling the requirements for the first order rainbow. For example, the index of refraction of diamond is about 2.4, so diamond spheres would produce rainbows starting from the second order, omitting the first order. In general, as the refractive index exceeds a number n+1, where n is a natural number, the critical incidence angle for n times internally reflected rays escapes the domain . This results in a rainbow of the n-th order shrinking to the antisolar point and vanishing.
Scientific history
The classical Greek scholar Aristotle (384–322 BC) was first to devote serious attention to the rainbow.[63] According to Raymond L. Lee and Alistair B. Fraser, 'Despite its many flaws and its appeal to Pythagorean numerology, Aristotle's qualitative explanation showed an inventiveness and relative consistency that was unmatched for centuries. After Aristotle's death, much rainbow theory consisted of reaction to his work, although not all of this was uncritical.'[64]
In Book I of Naturales Quaestiones (c. 65 AD), the Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger discusses various theories of the formation of rainbows extensively, including those of Aristotle. He notices that rainbows appear always opposite to the sun, that they appear in water sprayed by a rower, in the water spat by a fuller on clothes stretched on pegs or by water sprayed through a small hole in a burst pipe. He even speaks of rainbows produced by small rods (virgulae) of glass, anticipating Newton's experiences with prisms. He takes into account two theories: one, that the rainbow is produced by the sun reflecting in each water drop, the other, that it is produced by the sun reflected in a cloud shaped like a concave mirror; he favours the latter. He also discusses other phenomena related to rainbows: the mysterious 'virgae' (rods), halos and parhelia.[65]
According to Hüseyin Gazi Topdemir, the Arab physicist and polymathIbn al-Haytham (Alhazen; 965–1039), attempted to provide a scientific explanation for the rainbow phenomenon. In his Maqala fi al-Hala wa Qaws Quzah (On the Rainbow and Halo), al-Haytham 'explained the formation of rainbow as an image, which forms at a concave mirror. If the rays of light coming from a farther light source reflect to any point on axis of the concave mirror, they form concentric circles in that point. When it is supposed that the sun as a farther light source, the eye of viewer as a point on the axis of mirror and a cloud as a reflecting surface, then it can be observed the concentric circles are forming on the axis.'[66] He was not able to verify this because his theory that 'light from the sun is reflected by a cloud before reaching the eye' did not allow for a possible experimental verification.[67] This explanation was later repeated by Averroes,[66] and, though incorrect, provided the groundwork for the correct explanations later given by Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī (1267–1319) and Theodoric of Freiberg (c.1250–1310).[68]
Ibn al-Haytham's contemporary, the Persian philosopher and polymath Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna; 980–1037), provided an alternative explanation, writing 'that the bow is not formed in the dark cloud but rather in the very thin mist lying between the cloud and the sun or observer. The cloud, he thought, serves simply as the background of this thin substance, much as a quicksilver lining is placed upon the rear surface of the glass in a mirror. Ibn Sīnā would change the place not only of the bow, but also of the colour formation, holding the iridescence to be merely a subjective sensation in the eye.'[69] This explanation, however, was also incorrect.[66] Ibn Sīnā's account accepts many of Aristotle's arguments on the rainbow.[70]
In Song Dynasty China (960–1279), a polymath scholar-official named Shen Kuo (1031–1095) hypothesised—as a certain Sun Sikong (1015–1076) did before him—that rainbows were formed by a phenomenon of sunlight encountering droplets of rain in the air.[71] Paul Dong writes that Shen's explanation of the rainbow as a phenomenon of atmospheric refraction 'is basically in accord with modern scientific principles.'[72]
According to Nader El-Bizri, the Persian astronomer, Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (1236–1311), gave a fairly accurate explanation for the rainbow phenomenon. This was elaborated on by his student, Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī (1267–1319), who gave a more mathematically satisfactory explanation of the rainbow. He 'proposed a model where the ray of light from the sun was refracted twice by a water droplet, one or more reflections occurring between the two refractions.' An experiment with a water-filled glass sphere was conducted and al-Farisi showed the additional refractions due to the glass could be ignored in his model.[67] As he noted in his Kitab Tanqih al-Manazir (The Revision of the Optics), al-Farisi used a large clear vessel of glass in the shape of a sphere, which was filled with water, in order to have an experimental large-scale model of a rain drop. He then placed this model within a camera obscura that has a controlled aperture for the introduction of light. He projected light unto the sphere and ultimately deduced through several trials and detailed observations of reflections and refractions of light that the colours of the rainbow are phenomena of the decomposition of light.
In Europe, Ibn al-Haytham's Book of Optics was translated into Latin and studied by Robert Grosseteste. His work on light was continued by Roger Bacon, who wrote in his Opus Majus of 1268 about experiments with light shining through crystals and water droplets showing the colours of the rainbow.[73] In addition, Bacon was the first to calculate the angular size of the rainbow. He stated that the rainbow summit can not appear higher than 42° above the horizon.[74]Theodoric of Freiberg is known to have given an accurate theoretical explanation of both the primary and secondary rainbows in 1307. He explained the primary rainbow, noting that 'when sunlight falls on individual drops of moisture, the rays undergo two refractions (upon ingress and egress) and one reflection (at the back of the drop) before transmission into the eye of the observer.'[75][76] He explained the secondary rainbow through a similar analysis involving two refractions and two reflections.
Descartes' 1637 treatise, Discourse on Method, further advanced this explanation. Knowing that the size of raindrops did not appear to affect the observed rainbow, he experimented with passing rays of light through a large glass sphere filled with water. By measuring the angles that the rays emerged, he concluded that the primary bow was caused by a single internal reflection inside the raindrop and that a secondary bow could be caused by two internal reflections. He supported this conclusion with a derivation of the law of refraction (subsequently to, but independently of, Snell) and correctly calculated the angles for both bows. His explanation of the colours, however, was based on a mechanical version of the traditional theory that colours were produced by a modification of white light.[77][78]
Isaac Newton demonstrated that white light was composed of the light of all the colours of the rainbow, which a glass prism could separate into the full spectrum of colours, rejecting the theory that the colours were produced by a modification of white light. He also showed that red light is refracted less than blue light, which led to the first scientific explanation of the major features of the rainbow.[79] Newton's corpuscular theory of light was unable to explain supernumerary rainbows, and a satisfactory explanation was not found until Thomas Young realised that light behaves as a wave under certain conditions, and can interfere with itself.
Young's work was refined in the 1820s by George Biddell Airy, who explained the dependence of the strength of the colours of the rainbow on the size of the water droplets.[80] Modern physical descriptions of the rainbow are based on Mie scattering, work published by Gustav Mie in 1908.[81] Advances in computational methods and optical theory continue to lead to a fuller understanding of rainbows. For example, Nussenzveig provides a modern overview.[82]
Experiments
Experiments on the rainbow phenomenon using artificial raindrops, i.e. water-filled spherical flasks, go back at least to Theodoric of Freiberg in the 14th century. Later, also Descartes studied the phenomenon using a Florence flask. A flask experiment known as Florence's rainbow is still often used today as an imposing and intuitively accessible demonstration experiment of the rainbow phenomenon.[83][84][85] It consists in illuminating (with parallel white light) a water-filled spherical flask through a hole in a screen. A rainbow will then appear thrown back / projected on the screen, provided the screen is large enough. Due to the finite wall thickness and the macroscopic character of the artificial raindrop, several subtle differences exist as compared to the natural phenomenon,[86][87] including slightly changed rainbow angles and a splitting of the rainbow orders.
A very similar experiment consists in using a cylindrical glass vessel filled with water or a solid transparent cylinder and illuminated either parallel to the circular base (i.e. light rays remaining at a fixed height while they transit the cylinder)[88][89] or under an angle to the base. Under these latter conditions the rainbow angles change relative to the natural phenomenon since the effective index of refraction of water changes (Bravais' index of refraction for inclined rays applies).[86][87]
Other experiments use small liquid drops,[52][53] see text above.
Culture
Rainbows occur frequently in mythology, and have been used in the arts. One of the earliest literary occurrences of a rainbow is in the Book of Genesis chapter 9, as part of the flood story of Noah, where it is a sign of God's covenant to never destroy all life on earth with a global flood again. In Norse mythology, the rainbow bridge Bifröst connects the world of men (Midgard) and the realm of the gods (Asgard). Cuchavira was the god of the rainbow for the Muisca in present-day Colombia and when the regular rains on the Bogotá savanna were over, the people thanked him offering gold, snails and small emeralds. The Irish leprechaun's secret hiding place for his pot of gold is usually said to be at the end of the rainbow. This place is appropriately impossible to reach, because the rainbow is an optical effect which cannot be approached.
Rainbows sometimes appear in heraldry too, even if its characteristic of multiple colours doesn't really fit into the usual heraldic style.
Rainbow flags have been used for centuries. It was a symbol of the Cooperative movement in the German Peasants' War in the 16th century, of peace in Italy, and of gay pride and LGBT social movements since the 1970s. In 1994, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President Nelson Mandela described newly democratic post-apartheid South Africa as the rainbow nation. The rainbow has also been used in technology product logos, including the Apple computer logo. Many political alliances spanning multiple political parties have called themselves a 'Rainbow Coalition'.
See also
Notes
- ^'Dr. Jeff Masters Rainbow Site'. Archived from the original on 2015-01-29.
- ^ abIsaac Newton, Optice: Sive de Reflexionibus, Refractionibus, Inflexionibus & Coloribus Lucis Libri Tres, Propositio II, Experimentum VII, edition 1740:
Ex quo clarissime apparet, lumina variorum colorum varia esset refrangibilitate : idque eo ordine, ut color ruber omnium minime refrangibilis sit, reliqui autem colores, aureus, flavus, viridis, cæruleus, indicus, violaceus, gradatim & ex ordine magis magisque refrangibiles. - ^ abGary Waldman, Introduction to Light: The Physics of Light, Vision, and Color, 2002, p. 193:
A careful reading of Newton’s work indicates that the color he called indigo, we would normally call blue; his blue is then what we would name blue-green or cyan. - ^Walklet, Keith S. (2006). 'Lunar Rainbows – When to View and How to Photograph a 'Moonbow''. The Ansel Adams Gallery. Archived from the original on May 25, 2007. Retrieved 2007-06-07.
- ^'Why is the inside of a rainbow brighter than the outside sky?'. WeatherQuesting. Archived from the original on May 28, 2013. Retrieved 2013-08-19.
- ^'Rainbow – A polarized arch?'. Polarization.com. Archived from the original on 2013-09-09. Retrieved 2013-08-19.
- ^Burch, Paula E. 'All About Hand Dyeing Q&A'. Archived from the original on 24 April 2012. Retrieved 27 August 2012. (A number between 36 and 360 is in the order of 100)
- ^Gage, John (1994). Color and Meaning. University of California Press. p. 140. ISBN978-0-520-22611-1.
- ^Allchin, Douglas. 'Newton's Colors'. SHiPS Resource Center. Archived from the original on 2014-09-29. Retrieved 2010-10-16.
- ^Hutchison, Niels (2004). 'Music For Measure: On the 300th Anniversary of Newton's Opticks'. Colour Music. Archived from the original on 2017-01-18. Retrieved 2017-04-07.
- ^Newton, Isaac (1704). Opticks.
- ^'Visible Spectrum Wikipedia Contributors, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia accessed 11/17/2013 available at: Visible spectrum
- ^Asimov, Isaac (1975). Eyes on the Universe: A History of the Telescope. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 59. ISBN978-0-395-20716-1.
- ^Cowley, Les. 'Primary rainbow colours'. Atmospheric Optics. Retrieved 27 August 2012.
- ^Rosch Heider, E. (1972). 'Universals in color naming and memory'. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 93 (1): 10–20. doi:10.1037/h0032606. PMID5013326.
- ^Dawkins, Richard (2005). The ancestor's tale: a pilgrimage to the dawn of evolution.
- ^Roberson, Debi; Davies, Ian; Davidoff, Jules (September 2000). 'Color categories are not universal: Replications and new evidence from a stone-age culture'. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 129 (3): 369–398. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.129.3.369. PMID11006906.
- ^'About Rainbows'. Eo.ucar.edu. Archived from the original on 2013-08-18. Retrieved 2013-08-19.
- ^Cowley, Les. 'Sea Water Rainbow'. Atmospheric Optics. Retrieved 2007-06-07.
- ^Cowley, Les. 'Zero order glow'. Atmospheric Optics. Archived from the original on 2013-01-13. Retrieved 2011-08-08.
- ^Anon (7 November 2014). 'Why are rainbows curved as semicircles?'. Ask the van. The Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois. Archived from the original on 2 October 2015. Retrieved 13 April 2015.
- ^'How to see a whole circle rainbow – EarthSky.org'. earthsky.org. Archived from the original on 2013-10-04.
- ^'USATODAY.com – Look down on the rainbow'. usatoday30.usatoday.com.
- ^Anon (29 March 2004). 'Solution, Week 81, Rainbows'(PDF). Harvard University Department of Physics. Archived(PDF) from the original on 8 October 2016. Retrieved 13 June 2016.
- ^http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/imgatm/lpath2.gif
- ^'Secondary rainbow'. www.atoptics.co.uk.
- ^See:
- Alexander of Aphrodisias, Commentary on Book IV of Aristotle's Meteorology (also known as: Commentary on Book IV of Aristotle's De Meteorologica or On Aristotle's Meteorology 4), commentary 41.
- Raymond L. Lee and Alistair B. Fraser, The Rainbow Bridge: Rainbows in Art, Myth, and Science (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), pp. 110–111.
- ^'Atmospheric Optics: Twinned rainbows'. Atoptics.co.uk. 2002-06-03. Retrieved 2013-08-19.
- ^See:
- Alexander Haußmann, 'Observation, analysis, and reconstruction of a twinned rainbow', Applied Optics [https://web.archive.org/web/20150216145150/http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ao/abstract.cfm?uri=ao-54-4-B117 Archived 2015-02-16 at the Wayback Machine Vol. 54, Issue 4 (2015), pp. B117–B127]
- 'Researchers unlock secret of the rare 'twinned rainbow,' ' ScienceDaily.com, August 6, 2012.Archived August 9, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- ^Sadeghi, Iman; Munoz, Adolfo; Laven, Philip; Jarosz, Wojciech; Seron, Francisco; Gutierrez, Diego; Jensen, Henrik Wann (2012). 'Physically-based simulation of rainbows'(PDF). ACM Transactions on Graphics. 31: 1–12. doi:10.1145/2077341.2077344.
- ^'Triple-split rainbow observed and photographed in Japan, August 2012'. blog.meteoros.de. 2015-03-12. Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2015-03-12.
- ^'Can you ever see the whole circle of a rainbow? | Earth'. EarthSky. 2012-12-15. Archived from the original on 2013-10-04. Retrieved 2013-10-04.
- ^Philip Laven (2012-08-04). 'Circular rainbows'. Philiplaven.com. Archived from the original on 2013-10-05. Retrieved 2013-10-04.
- ^'APOD: 2014 September 30 – A Full Circle Rainbow over Australia'. apod.nasa.gov. Archived from the original on 2015-01-25.
- ^'OPOD – 360° Rainbow'. www.atoptics.co.uk.
- ^'Supernumerary Rainbows'. www.atoptics.co.uk.
- ^'Supernumerary Rainbows and drop size'. www.atoptics.co.uk.
- ^'Fogbow droplet size effect'. www.atoptics.co.uk.
- ^See:
- Thomas Young (1804) 'Bakerian Lecture: Experiments and calculations relative to physical optics,'Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London94: 1–16; see especially pp. 8–11.
- ^Les Cowley (Atmospheric Optics). 'Bows everywhere!'. Retrieved 13 April 2015.
- ^Nemiroff, R.; Bonnell, J., eds. (12 September 2007). 'Six Rainbows Across Norway'. Astronomy Picture of the Day. NASA. Retrieved 2007-06-07.
- ^'Atmospheric Optics: Reflection rainbows formation'. Atoptics.co.uk. Retrieved 2013-08-19.
- ^'Dawn Red Rainbows Arizona – OPOD'. atoptics.co.uk.
- ^'Untitled Document'. www.atoptics.co.uk.
- ^'3rd & 4th order rainbows'. www.atoptics.co.uk.
- ^Großmann, Michael; Schmidt, Elmar; Haußmann, Alexander (1 Oct 2011). 'Photographic evidence for the third-order rainbow'. Applied Optics. 50 (28): F134–F141. Bibcode:2011ApOpt.50F.134G. doi:10.1364/AO.50.00F134. ISSN1559-128X. PMID22016237.
- ^'Triple Rainbows Exist, Photo Evidence Shows, ScienceDaily.com, Oct. 5, 2011'. Sciencedaily.com. 2011-10-06. Archived from the original on 2013-10-04. Retrieved 2013-08-19.
- ^Theusner, Michael (1 Oct 2011). 'Photographic observation of a natural fourth-order rainbow'. Applied Optics. 50 (28): F129–F133. Bibcode:2011ApOpt.50F.129T. doi:10.1364/AO.50.00F129. ISSN1559-128X. PMID22016236.
- ^'Short Sharp Science: First ever image of fourth-order rainbow'. www.newscientist.com. Archived from the original on 2017-07-11.
- ^'Observations of the quinary rainbow'. www.weatherscapes.com. Archived from the original on 2015-01-03.
- ^Billet, Felix (1868). 'Mémoire sur les Dix-neuf premiers arcs-en-ciel de l'eau' [Memoir on the first nineteen rainbows]. Annales Scientifiques de l'École Normale Supérieure. 1 (5): 67–109. doi:10.24033/asens.43.
- ^ abWalker, Jearl (1977). 'How to create and observe a dozen rainbows in a single drop of water'. Scientific American. 237 (July): 138–144 + 154. Bibcode:1977SciAm.237a.138W. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0777-138. Archived from the original on 2011-08-14. Retrieved 2011-08-08.
- ^ abJ.D. Walker, “Mysteries of rainbows, notably their raresupernumerary arcs,” Sci. Am. 242(6), 174–184 (1980).
- ^Ng, P. H.; Tse, M. Y.; Lee, W. K. (1998). 'Observation of high-order rainbows formed by a pendant drop'. Journal of the Optical Society of America B. 15 (11): 2782. Bibcode:1998JOSAB.15.2782N. doi:10.1364/JOSAB.15.002782.
- ^'Moonbow – Lunar Rainbow'. www.atoptics.co.uk.
- ^See:
- James C. McConnel (1890) 'The theory of fog-bows,'Philosophical Magazine, series 5, 29 (181): 453–461.
- ^Les Cowley. Observing Halos – Getting Started Atmospheric Optics, accessed 3 December 2013.
- ^'Circumzenithal Arc'. www.atoptics.co.uk.
- ^Cowley, Les. 'Circumhorizontal arc'. Atmospheric Optics. Retrieved 2007-04-22.
- ^Science@NASA. 'Rainbows on Titan'. Archived from the original on 2008-09-21. Retrieved 2008-11-25.
- ^Cowley, Les. 'Sea Water Rainbow'. Atmospheric Optics. Retrieved 2016-11-10.
- ^Cowley, Les. 'Glass Bead Bows'. Atmospheric Optics. Retrieved 2016-11-10.
- ^'The Internet Classics Archive – Meteorology by Aristotle'. classics.mit.edu. Archived from the original on 2014-02-18.
- ^Raymond L. Lee; Alistair B. Fraser (2001). The rainbow bridge: rainbows in art, myth, and science. Penn State Press. p. 109. ISBN978-0-271-01977-2.
- ^Seneca, Lucius Anneus (1 April 2014). Delphi Complete Works of Seneca the Younger (Illustrated). Book I (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 27 ed.). Delphi Classics.
- ^ abcTopdemir, Hüseyin Gazi (2007). 'Kamal Al-Din Al-Farisi's Explanation of the Rainbow'(PDF). Humanity & Social Sciences Journal. 2 (1): 75–85 [77]. Archived(PDF) from the original on 2008-10-02. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
- ^ abO'Connor, J.J.; Robertson, E.F. (November 1999). 'Kamal al-Din Abu'l Hasan Muhammad Al-Farisi'. MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews. Archived from the original on 2007-03-25. Retrieved 2007-06-07.
approximation obtained by his model was good enough to allow him to ignore the effects of the glass container
- ^Topdemir, Hüseyin Gazi (2007). 'Kamal Al-Din Al-Farisi's Explanation of the Rainbow'(PDF). Humanity & Social Sciences Journal. 2 (1): 75–85 [83]. Archived(PDF) from the original on 2008-10-02. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
- ^Carl Benjamin Boyer (1954). 'Robert Grosseteste on the Rainbow'. Osiris. 11: 247–258. doi:10.1086/368581.
- ^Raymond L. Lee; Alistair B. Fraser (2001). The rainbow bridge: rainbows in art, myth, and science. Penn State Press. pp. 141–144. ISBN978-0-271-01977-2.
- ^Sivin, Nathan (1995). Science in Ancient China: Researches and Reflections Brookfield, Vermont: VARIORUM. III: Ashgate Publishing. p. 24.
- ^Dong, Paul (2000). China's Major Mysteries: Paranormal Phenomena and the Unexplained in the People's Republic. San Francisco: China Books and Periodicals, Inc. p. 72. ISBN978-0-8351-2676-2.
- ^Davidson, Michael W. (August 1, 2003). 'Roger Bacon (1214–1294)'. Florida State University. Archived from the original on August 30, 2006. Retrieved 2006-08-10.
- ^Raymond L. Lee; Alistair B. Fraser (2001). The rainbow bridge: rainbows in art, myth, and science. p. 156. ISBN978-0-271-01977-2.
- ^Lindberg, David C (Summer 1966). 'Roger Bacon's Theory of the Rainbow: Progress or Regress?'. Isis. 57 (2): 235. doi:10.1086/350116.
- ^Theodoric of Freiberg (c. 1304–1310) De iride et radialibus impressionibus (On the rainbow and the impressions of radiance).
- ^Boyer, Carl B. (1952). 'Descartes and the Radius of the Rainbow'. Isis. 43 (2): 95–98. doi:10.1086/349399.
- ^Gedzelman, Stanley David (1989). 'Did Kepler's Supplement to Witelo Inspire Descartes' Theory of the Rainbow?'. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 70 (7): 750–751. Bibcode:1989BAMS..70.750G. doi:10.1175/1520-0477(1989)070<0750:DKSTWI>2.0.CO;2. ISSN1520-0477.
- ^O'Connor, J.J.; Robertson, E.F. (January 2000). 'Sir Isaac Newton'. University of St. Andrews. Archived from the original on 2007-06-10. Retrieved 2007-06-19.
- ^See:
- Airy, G. B. (1838). 'On the intensity of light in the neighbourhood of a caustic'. Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. 6 (3): 379–403. Bibcode:1838TCaPS..6.379A.
- G. B. Airy (1849) 'Supplement to a paper, 'On the intensity of light in the neighbourhood of a caustic,' 'Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society8: 595–600.
- ^G. Mie (1908) 'Beiträge zur Optik trüber Medien, speziell kolloidaler Metallösungen'Archived 2012-03-02 at the Wayback Machine (Contributions to the optics of turbid media, especially of colloidal metal solutions), Annalen der Physik, 4th series, 25 (3): 377–445.
- ^Nussenzveig, H. Moyses (1977). 'The Theory of the Rainbow'. Scientific American. 236 (4): 116. Bibcode:1977SciAm.236d.116N. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0477-116.
- ^“Florence's Rainbow”, Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations, linkArchived 2017-01-08 at the Wayback Machine
- ^“Rainbow: Refraction of white light by a liquid sphere.”, U.C. Berkeley Physics Lecture Demonstrations, linkArchived 2017-01-08 at the Wayback Machine
- ^“The Rainbow,”J.B. Calvert, linkArchived 2016-05-24 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved: 10/01/2016
- ^ ab“Revisiting the round bottom flask rainbow experiment.”, M. Selmke and S. Selmke, arXiv, linkArchived 2017-01-08 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ abPictures and Raytracings under 'Alexander's dark band (or bright band?)', M. Selmke, linkArchived 2017-01-08 at the Wayback Machine
- ^G. Casini and A. Covello, “The ”rainbow” in the drop,” Am. J. Phys. 80(11), 1027–1034 (2012).
- ^“Primary and Secondary Bow of a Rainbow”, U.C. Berkeley Physics Lecture Demonstrations, linkArchived 2017-01-08 at the Wayback Machine
References
- Greenler, Robert (1980). Rainbows, Halos, and Glories. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-19-521833-6.
- Lee, Raymond L. & Alastair B. Fraser (2001). The Rainbow Bridge: Rainbows in Art, Myth and Science. New York: Pennsylvania State University Press and SPIE Press. ISBN978-0-271-01977-2.
- Lynch, David K.; Livingston, William (2001). Color and Light in Nature (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-521-77504-5.
- Minnaert, Marcel G.J.; Lynch, David K.; Livingston, William (1993). Light and Color in the Outdoors. Springer-Verlag. ISBN978-0-387-97935-9.
- Minnaert, Marcel G.J.; Lynch, David K.; Livingston, William (1973). The Nature of Light and Color in the Open Air. Dover Publications. ISBN978-0-486-20196-2.
- Naylor, John; Lynch, David K.; Livingston, William (2002). Out of the Blue: A 24-Hour Skywatcher's Guide. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-521-80925-2.
- Boyer, Carl B. (1987). The Rainbow, From Myth to Mathematics. Princeton University Press. ISBN978-0-691-08457-2.
- Graham, Lanier F., ed. (1976). The Rainbow Book. Berkeley, California: Shambhala Publications and The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. (Large format handbook for the Summer 1976 exhibition The Rainbow Art Show which took place primarily at the De Young Museum but also at other museums. The book is divided into seven sections, each coloured a different colour of the rainbow.)
- De Rico, Ul (1978). The Rainbow Goblins. Thames & Hudson. ISBN978-0-500-27759-1.
External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Rainbows |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rainbow. |
- Atmospheric Optics website by Les Cowley – Description of multiple types of bows, including: 'bows that cross, red bows, twinned bows, coloured fringes, dark bands, spokes', etc.
- Merrifield, Michael. 'Rainbows'. Sixty Symbols. Brady Haran for the University of Nottingham.
- Creating Circular and Double Rainbows! – video explanation of basics, shown artificial rainbow at night, second rainbow and circular one.
MNN Galleries
11 stunning images of rainbows and their less-famous cousins
By: Katherine Butler on July 29, 2016, 2:55 p.m.
Photo: Andrew Dunn/Wikimedia Comons
The color of order (and order of color)
A rainbow forms when each tiny droplet of water disperses sunlight. The pattern of light is always the same in a primary rainbow because each color is reflected at its own particular wavelength. In a primary rainbow, the colors will be in the order of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Or ROYGBIV. Red has the longest wavelength, with each color decreasing away from it. The colors seem to blend into each other because the light exits at different angles, rather than one unmoving angle. Here we see a supernumerary rainbow, an infrequent phenomenon that happens when faint rainbows are seen within the inner ring of a primary rainbow. Experts say that geometric optics does not fully explain the existence of supernumerary rainbows, which are likely created due to the varying wave nature of light.
It seems too ideal to be true, but this spectacular photograph of a gothic Victorian castle ringed by a perfect rainbow was the result of patience.. and luck.
Jon Clark was waiting for the sun to start setting after a grey and rainy summer’s day when the clouds finally parted.
Mr Clark launched his remote-controlled drone and was rewarded with this image of Riber Castle above Matlock in Derbyshire.
The photograph has been shortlisted in the drone category of the British Photography Awards, with the winner to be announced in January.
‘I had almost given up on getting any good light,’ Mr Clark said. ‘I felt very lucky.’
Jon Clark launched his remote-controlled drone and was rewarded with this image of Riber Castle above Matlock in Derbyshire
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‘I had almost given up on getting any good light,’ Mr Clark said. ‘I felt very lucky.’ (File picture of Riber Castle in Derbyshire)
The portraiture of Elizabeth I of England illustrates the evolution of English royal portraits in the Early Modern period from the representations of simple likenesses to the later complex imagery used to convey the power and aspirations of the state, as well as of the monarch at its head.
Even the earliest portraits of Elizabeth I (1533–1603) contain symbolic objects such as roses and prayer books that would have carried meaning to viewers of her day. Later portraits of Elizabeth layer the iconography of empire—globes, crowns, swords and columns—and representations of virginity and purity—such as moons and pearls—with classical allusions to present a complex 'story' that conveyed to Elizabethan era viewers the majesty and significance of their Virgin Queen.
- 1Overview
- 2Early portraits
- 3The Virgin Empress of the Seas
- 6Gallery
Overview[edit]
Portraiture in Tudor England[edit]
Two portraiture traditions had arisen in the Tudor court since the days of Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII. The portrait miniature developed from the illuminated manuscript tradition. These small personal images were almost invariably painted from life over the space of a few days in watercolours on vellum stiffened by being glued to a playing card. Panel paintings in oils on prepared wood surfaces were based on preparatory drawings and were usually executed at life size, as were oil paintings on canvas.
Unlike her contemporaries in France, Elizabeth never granted rights to produce her portrait to a single artist, although Nicholas Hilliard was appointed her official limner or miniaturist and goldsmith. George Gower, a fashionable court portraitist created Serjeant Painter in 1581, was responsible for approving all portraits of the queen created by other artists from that date until his death in 1596.[2] Elizabeth sat to a number of artists over the years, including Hilliard, Cornelis Ketel, Federico Zuccaro or Zuccari, Isaac Oliver, and most likely to Gower and Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger.[2]
Portraits were commissioned by the government as gifts to foreign monarchs and to show to prospective suitors. Courtiers commissioned heavily symbolic paintings to demonstrate their devotion to the queen. The fashionable long galleries of later Elizabethan country houses were filled with sets of portraits. The studios of Tudor artists produced images of Elizabeth working from approved 'face patterns' or drawings of the queen to meet this growing demand for her image, an important symbol of loyalty and reverence for the crown in times of turbulence.[2]
European context[edit]
Far the most impressive models available to English portraitists were the many portraits by Hans Holbein the Younger, the outstanding Northern portraitist of the first half of the century, who had made two lengthy visits to England and been Henry VIII's court artist. Holbein had accustomed the English court to the full-length life-size portrait,[3] although none of his originals now survive. His great dynastic mural at Whitehall Palace, destroyed in 1698, and perhaps other original large portraits, would have been familiar to Elizabethan artists.[4]
Both Holbein and his great Italian contemporary Titian had combined great psychological penetration with a sufficiently majestic impression to satisfy their royal patrons. By his second visit Holbein was already moving away from a strictly realist depiction; in his Jane Seymour 'the figure is no longer seen as displacing with its bulk a recognizable section of space: it approaches rather to a flat pattern, made alive by a bounding and vital outline'.[5] This tendency was to be taken much further by the later portraits of Elizabeth, where 'Likeness of feature and an interest in form and volume have gradually been abandoned in favour of an effect of splendid majesty obtained by decorative pattern, and the forms have been flattened accordingly'.[6]
Titian continued to paint royal portraits, especially of Philip II of Spain, until the 1570s, but in sharply reduced numbers after about 1555, and he refused to travel from Venice to do them.[7] The full-length portrait of Philip (1550–51) now in the Prado was sent to Elizabeth's elder sister and predecessor Mary I in advance of their marriage.[8]
Towards the mid-century the most influential Continental courts came to prefer less revealing and intimate works,[9] and at the mid-century the two most prominent and influential royal portraitists in paint, other than Titian, were the Netherlandish Anthonis Mor and Agnolo Bronzino in Florence, besides whom the Habsburg court sculptor and medallist Leone Leoni should also be mentioned. Mor, who had risen rapidly to prominence in 1540s, worked across Europe for the Habsburgs in a tighter and more rigid version of Titian's compositional manner, drawing also on the North Italian style of Moretto.[10] Mor had actually visited London in 1554, and painted three versions of his well-known portrait of Queen Mary; he also painted English courtiers who visited Antwerp.[11]
Mor's Spanish pupil Alonso Sánchez Coello continued in a stiffer version of his master's style, replacing him as Spanish court painter in 1561. Sofonisba Anguissola had painted in an intimately informal style, but after her recruitment to the Spanish court as the Queen's painter in 1560 was able to adapt her style to the much more formal demands of state portraiture. Moretto's pupil Giovanni Battista Moroni was Mor's contemporary and formed his mature style in the 1550s, but few of his spirited portraits were of royalty, or yet to be seen outside Italy.[12]
Bronzino developed a style of coldly distant magnificence, based on the Mannerist portraits of Pontormo, working almost entirely for Cosimo I, the first Medici Grand-Duke.[13] Bronzino's works, including his striking portraits of Cosimo's Duchess, Eleanor of Toledo were distributed in many versions across Europe, continuing to be made for two decades from the same studio pattern; a new portrait painted in her last years, about 1560, exists in only a few repetitions. At the least many of the foreign painters in London are likely to have seen versions of the earlier type, and there may well have been one in the Royal Collection.
French portraiture remained dominated by small but finely drawn bust-length or half-length works, including many drawings, often with colour, by François Clouet following, with a host of imitators, his father Jean, or even smaller oils by the Netherlandish Corneille de Lyon and his followers, typically no taller than a paperback book. A few full-length portraits of royalty were produced, dependent on German or Italian models.[14]
Creating the royal image[edit]
William Gaunt contrasts the simplicity of the 1546 portrait of Elizabeth Tudor as a Princess with later images of her as queen. He wrote, 'The painter..is unknown, but in a competently Flemish style he depicts the daughter of Anne Boleyn as quiet and studious-looking, ornament in her attire as secondary to the plainness of line that emphasizes her youth. Great is the contrast with the awesome fantasy of the later portraits: the pallid, mask-like features, the extravagance of headdress and ruff, the padded ornateness that seemed to exclude all humanity.'[15]
The lack of emphasis given to depicting depth and volume in her later portraits may have been influenced by the Queen's own views. In the Art of Limming Hilliard cautioned against all but the minimal use of chiaroscuro modelling that we see in his works, reflecting the views of his patron: 'seeing that best to show oneself needeth no shadow of place but rather the open light..Her Majesty.chose her place to sit for that purpose in the open alley of a goodly garden, where no tree was near, nor any shadow at all..'[16]
From the 1570s, the government sought to manipulate the image of the queen as an object of devotion and veneration. Sir Roy Strong writes: 'The cult of Gloriana was skilfully created to buttress public order and, even more, deliberately to replace the pre-Reformation externals of religion, the cult of the Virgin and saints with their attendant images, processions, ceremonies and secular rejoicing.'[17] The pageantry of the Accession Day tilts, the poetry of the court, and the most iconic of Elizabeth's portraits all reflect this effort. The management of the queen's image reached its heights in the last decade of the reign, when realistic images of the aging queen were replaced with an eternally youthful vision defying the reality of the passage of time.
Early portraits[edit]
The young queen[edit]
Portraits of the young queen, many of them likely painted to be shown to prospective suitors and foreign heads of state, show a naturalness and restraint similar to those in the portrait of Elizabeth as a princess.
The full-length Hampden image of Elizabeth in a red satin gown by Steven van der Meulen has been identified by Sir Roy Strong as an important early portrait, 'undertaken at a time when her image was being tightly controlled. 'This is a portrait dating from the mid to late 1560s, one of a group produced in response to a crisis over the production of the royal image, one which was reflected in the words of a draft proclamation dated 1563,' he said.'[18] The draft proclamation (never published) was a response to the circulation of poorly made portraits in which Elizabeth is shown 'in blacke with a hoode and cornet', a style she no longer wore.[19][20] Symbolism in these pictures is in keeping with earlier Tudor portraiture; in some Elizabeth holds a book (possibly a prayer book) suggesting studiousness or piety. In other paintings she holds or wears a red rose, symbol of the Tudor Dynasty's descent from the House of Lancaster, or white roses, symbols of the House of York and of maidenly chastity.[21] In the Hampden portrait, Elizabeth wears a red rose on her shoulder and holds a gillyflower in her hand. Of this image, Strong says 'Here Elizabeth is caught in that short-lived period before what was a recognisable human became transmuted into a goddess'.'[18][22]
One artist active in Elizabeth's early court was the Flemish miniaturist Levina Teerlinc who had served as a painter and gentlewoman to Mary I and stayed on as a Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber to Elizabeth. Teerlinc is best known for her pivotal position in the rise of the portrait miniature. There is documentation that she created numerous portraits of Elizabeth I, both individual portraits and portraits of the sovereign with important court figures, but only a few of these have survived and been identified.[23]
Elizabeth and the goddesses[edit]
Two surviving allegorical paintings show the early use of classical mythology to illustrate the beauty and sovereignty of the young queen. In Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses (1569), attributed to Hans Eworth,[24] the story of the Judgement of Paris is turned on its head. Elizabeth, rather than Paris, is now sent to choose among Juno, Venus, and Pallas-Minerva, all of whom are outshone by the queen with her crown and royal orb. As Susan Doran writes, 'Implicit to the theme of the painting .. is the idea that Elizabeth's retention of royal power benefits her realm. Whereas Paris's judgement in the original myth resulted in the long Trojan Wars 'to the utter ruin of the Trojans', hers will conversely bring peace and order to the state'[25] after the turbulent reign of Elizabeth's sister Mary I.
The latter theme lies behind the 1572 The Family of Henry VIII: An Allegory of the Tudor Succession (attributed to Lucas de Heere). In this image, Catholic Mary and her husband Philip II of Spain are accompanied by Mars the god of War on the left, while Protestant Elizabeth on the right ushers in the goddesses Peace and Plenty.[26] An inscription states that this painting was a gift from the queen to Francis Walsingham as a 'Mark of her people's and her own content' and this may indicate that it commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Blois (1572) which established an alliance between England and France against Spanish aggression in the Netherlands during Walsingham's tour of duty as ambassador to the French court.[27] Strong identifies both paintings as celebrations of Elizabeth's just rule by Flemish exiles to whom England was a refuge from the religious persecution of Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands.[28]
Hilliard and the queen[edit]
Nicholas Hilliard was an apprentice to the Queen's jeweller Robert Brandon,[29] a goldsmith and city chamberlain of London, and Sir Roy Strong suggests that Hilliard may also have been trained in the art of limning by Levina Teerlinc.[29] Hilliard emerged from his apprenticeship at a time when a new royal portrait painter was 'desperately needed.'[29]
Seven online. Hilliard's first known miniature of the Queen is dated 1572. It is not known when he was formally appointed limner (miniaturist) and goldsmith to Elizabeth,[30] though he was granted the reversion of a lease by the Queen in 1573 for his 'good, true and loyal service.'[31] Two panel portraits long attributed to him, the Phoenix and Pelican portraits, are dated c. 1572–76. These paintings are named after the jewels the queen wears, her personal badges of the pelican in her piety and the phoenix. National Portrait Gallery researchers announced in September 2010 that the two portraits were painted on wood from the same two trees. They also found that a tracing of the Phoenix portrait matches the Pelican portrait in reverse. They therefore deduce that both pictures of Elizabeth in her forties were painted around the same time.[32]
But Hilliard's panel portraits seem to have been found wanting, and in 1576 the recently married Hilliard left for France to improve his skills. Returning to England, he continued to work as a goldsmith, and produced some spectacular 'picture boxes' or jewelled lockets for miniatures: the Armada Jewel, given by Elizabeth to Sir Thomas Heneage and the Drake Pendant given to Sir Francis Drake are the best known examples. As part of the cult of the Virgin Queen, courtiers were rather expected to wear the Queen's likeness, at least at Court.
His appointment as miniaturist to the Crown included the old sense of a painter of illuminated manuscripts and he was commissioned to decorate important documents, such as the founding charter of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (1584), which has an enthroned Elizabeth under a canopy of estate within an elaborate framework of Flemish-style Renaissance strapwork and grotesque ornament. He also seems to have designed woodcut title-page frames and borders for books, some of which bear his initials.[33]
The Darnley Portrait[edit]
The problem of an official portrait of Elizabeth was solved with the Darnley Portrait.[34] Likely painted from life around 1575–6, this portrait is the source of a face pattern which would be used and reused for authorized portraits of Elizabeth into the 1590s, preserving the impression of ageless beauty. Sir Roy Strong suggested that the artist is Federico Zuccari or Zucaro, an 'eminent' Italian artist, though not really a specialist portrait-painter, who is known to have visited the court briefly with a letter of introduction to Elizabeth's favouriteRobert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester dated 5 March 1575.[35] Zuccaro's preparatory drawings for full-length portraits of both Leicester and Elizabeth survive, although it is unlikely the full-length of Elizabeth was ever painted.[35] Curators at the National Portrait Gallery believe that the attribution of the Darnley portrait to Zuccaro is 'not sustainable' and attribute the work to an unknown 'continental' (possibly Netherlandish) artist.[36]
The Darnley Portrait features a crown and sceptre on a table beside the queen, and was the first appearance of these symbols of sovereignty separately used as props (rather than worn and carried) in Tudor portraiture, a theme that would be expanded in later portraits.[35] Recent conservation work has revealed that Elizabeth's now-iconic pale complexion in this portrait is the result of deterioration of red lake pigments, which has also altered the coloring of her dress.[37][38]
The Virgin Empress of the Seas[edit]
Return of the Golden Age[edit]
The excommunication of Elizabeth by Pope Pius V in 1570 led to increased tension with Philip II of Spain, who championed the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, as the legitimate heir of his late wife Mary I. This tension played out over the next decades in the seas of the New World as well as in Europe, and culminated in the invasion attempt of the Spanish Armada.
It is against this backdrop that the first of a long series of portraits appears depicting Elizabeth with heavy symbolic overlays of imperial dominion based on mastery of the seas.[39] Combined with a second layer of symbolism representing Elizabeth as the Virgin Queen, these new paintings signify the manipulation of Elizabeth's image as the destined Protestant protector of her people.
Strong points out that there is no trace of this iconography in portraits of Elizabeth prior to 1579, and identifies its source as the conscious image-making of John Dee, whose 1577 General and Rare Memorials Pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation encouraged the establishment of a British Empire supported by a strong navy, asserting Elizabeth's claims to imperial status via her supposed descent from Brutus of Troy and King Arthur.[40]
Dee's inspiration lies in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, which was accepted as true history by Elizabethan poets[citation needed] and formed the basis of the symbolic history of England. In this twelfth century pseudohistory, Britain was founded by and named after Brutus, the descendent of Aeneas who founded Rome. The Tudors, of Welsh descent, are heirs of the most ancient Britons and thus of Aeneas and Brutus. By uniting the Houses of York and Lancaster following the strife of the Wars of the Roses, the Tudors ushered in a united realm where Pax reigned.[41] The Spenserian scholar Edwin Greenlaw states 'The descent of the Britons from the Trojans, the linking of Arthur, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth as Britain's greatest monarchs, and the return under Elizabeth of the Golden Age are all commonplaces of Elizabethan thought.'[42] This understanding of history and Elizabeth's place in it forms the background to the symbolic portraits of the latter half of her reign.
The Virgin Queen[edit]
A series of Sieve Portraits copy the Darnley face pattern and add an allegorical overlay that depicts Elizabeth as Tuccia, a Vestal Virgin who proved her chastity by carrying a sieve full of water from the Tiber River to the Temple of Vesta without spilling a drop.[43] The first Sieve Portrait was painted by George Gower in 1579, but the most influential image is the 1583 version by Quentin Metsys (or Massys) the Younger.[44]
In the Metsys version, Elizabeth is surrounded by symbols of empire, including a column and a globe, iconography that would appear again and again in her portraiture of the 1580s and 1590s, most notably in the Armada Portrait of c. 1588.[45] The medallions on the pillar to the left of the queen illustrate the story of Dido and Aeneas, ancestor of Brutus, suggesting that like Aeneas, Elizabeth's destiny is to reject marriage and found an empire. This painting's patron was likely Sir Christopher Hatton (his heraldic badge of the white hind appears on the sleeve of one of the courtiers in the background), and the work may express opposition to the proposed marriage of Elizabeth to François, Duke of Anjou.[46][47]
The virgin Tuccia was familiar to Elizabethan readers from Petrarch's 'The Triumph of Chastity'. Another symbol from this work is the spotless ermine, wearing a collar of gold studded with topazes.[48] This symbol of purity appears in the Ermine Portrait of 1585, attributed to the heraldWilliam Segar. The queen bears the olive branch of Pax (Peace), and the sword of justice rests on the table at her side.[49] In combination, these symbols represent not only the personal purity of Elizabeth but the 'righteousness and justice of her government.'[50]
Visions of empire[edit]
The Armada Portrait is an allegorical panel painting depicting the queen surrounded by symbols of empire against a backdrop representing the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
There are three surviving versions of the portrait, in addition to several derivative paintings. The version at Woburn Abbey, the seat of the Dukes of Bedford, was long accepted as the work of George Gower, who had been appointed Serjeant Painter in 1581.[51] A version in the National Portrait Gallery, London, which has been cut down at both sides leaving just a portrait of the queen, was also formerly attributed to Gower. A third version, owned by the Tyrwhitt-Drake family, may have been commissioned by Sir Francis Drake. Scholars agree that this version is by a different hand, noting distinctive techniques and approaches to the modelling of the queen's features.[51][52][53] Curators now believe that the three extant versions are all the output of different workshops under the direction of unknown English artists.[54]
The combination of a life-sized portrait of the queen with a horizontal format is 'quite unprecedented in her portraiture',[51] although allegorical portraits in a horizontal format, such as Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses and the Family of Henry VIII: An Allegory of the Tudor Succession pre-date the Armada Portrait.
The queen's hand rests on a globe below the crown of England, 'her fingers covering the Americas, indicating England's dominion of the seas and plans for imperialist expansion in the New World'.[55][56] The Queen is flanked by two columns behind, probably a reference to the famous impresa of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, Philip II of Spain's father, which represented the pillars of Hercules, gateway to the Atlantic Ocean and the New World.[57]
In the background view on the left, English fireships threaten the Spanish fleet, and on the right the ships are driven onto a rocky coast amid stormy seas by the 'Protestant Wind'. On a secondary level, these images show Elizabeth turning her back on storm and darkness while sunlight shines where she gazes.[51]
An engraving by Crispijn van de Passe (Crispin van de Passe), published in 1596 but showing costume of the 1580s, carries similar iconography. Elizabeth stands between two columns bearing her arms and the Tudor heraldic badge of a portcullis. The columns are surmounted by her emblems of a pelican in her piety and a phoenix, and ships fill the sea behind her.[58]
The cult of Elizabeth[edit]
Picture Of A Rainbow Fish
The various threads of mythology and symbolism that created the iconography of Elizabeth I combined into a tapestry of immense complexity in the years following the defeat of the Spanish Armada. In poetry, portraiture and pageantry, the queen was celebrated as Astraea, the just virgin, and simultaneously as Venus, the goddess of love. Another exaltation of the queen's virgin purity identified her with the moon goddess who holds dominion over the waters. Sir Walter Raleigh had begun to use Diana and later Cynthia as aliases for the queen in his poetry around 1580, and images of Elizabeth with jewels in the shape of crescent moons or the huntress's arrows begin to appear in portraiture around 1586 and multiply through the remainder of the reign.[59] Courtiers wore the image of the Queen to signify their devotion, and had their portraits painted wearing her colours of black and white.[60]
The Ditchley Portrait seems to have always been at the Oxfordshire home of Elizabeth's retired Champion, Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley, and likely was painted for (or commemorates) her two-day visit to Ditchley in 1592. The painting is attributed to Marcus Gheerearts the Younger, and was almost certainly based on a sitting arranged by Lee, who was the painter's patron. In this image, the queen stands on a map of England, her feet on Oxfordshire. The painting has been trimmed and the background poorly repainted, so that the inscription and sonnet are incomplete. Storms rage behind her while the sun shines before her, and she wears a jewel in the form of a celestial or armillary sphere close to her left ear. Many versions of this painting were made, likely in Gheeraerts' workshop, with the allegorical items removed and Elizabeth's features 'softened' from the stark realism of her face in the original. One of these was sent as a diplomatic gift to the Grand Duke of Tuscany and is now in the Palazzo Pitti.[61]
The last sitting and the Mask of Youth[edit]
Around 1592, the queen also sat to Isaac Oliver, a pupil of Hilliard, who produced an unfinished portrait miniature (left) used as a pattern for engravings of the queen. Only a single finished miniature from this pattern survives, with the queen's features softened, and Strong concludes that this realistic image from life of the aging Elizabeth was not deemed a success.[62]
Prior to the 1590s, woodcuts and engravings of the queen were created as book illustrations, but in this decade individual prints of the queen first appear, based on the Oliver face pattern. In 1596, the Privy Council ordered that unseemly portraits of the queen which had caused her 'great offence' should be sought out and burnt, and Strong suggest that these prints, of which comparatively few survive, may be the offending images. Strong writes 'It must have been exposure to the searching realism of both Gheeraerts and Oliver that provoked the decision to suppress all likenesses of the queen that depicted her as being in any way old and hence subject to mortality.'[63]
In any event, no surviving portraits dated between 1596 and Elizabeth's death in 1603 show the aging queen as she truly was. Faithful resemblance to the original is only to be found in contemporaries’ accounts as in the report written in 1597 by André Hurault de Maisse, Ambassador Extraordinary from Henry IV of France, after an audience with the sixty-five year-old queen, during which he noticed, 'her teeth are very yellow and unequal .. and on the left side less than on the right. Many of them are missing, so that one cannot understand her easily when she speaks quickly.' Yet he added, 'her figure is fair and tall and graceful in whatever she does; so far as may be she keeps her dignity, yet humbly and graciously withal.'[64] All subsequent images rely on a face pattern devised by Nicholas Hilliard sometime in the 1590s called by art historians the 'Mask of Youth', portraying Elizabeth as ever-young.[63][65] Some 16 miniatures by Hilliard and his studio are known based on this face pattern, with different combinations of costume and jewels likely painted from life, and it was also adopted by (or enforced on) other artists associated with the Court.[63]
The coronation portraits[edit]
Two portraits of Elizabeth in her coronation robes survive, both dated to 1600 or shortly thereafter. One is a panel portrait in oils (above) and the other is a miniature by Nicholas Hilliard. The warrant to the queen's tailor for remodelling Mary I's cloth of gold coronation robes for Elizabeth survives, and costume historian Janet Arnold's study points out that the paintings accurately reflect the written records, although the jewels differ in the two paintings,[1][66] suggesting two different sources, one possibly a miniature by Levina Teerlinc. It is not known why, and for whom, these portraits were created; at or just after the end of the reign.[67]
The Rainbow Portrait[edit]
Picture Of A Rainbow Snake
Attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger,[68] perhaps the most heavily symbolic portrait of the queen is the Rainbow Portrait at Hatfield House. It was painted around 1600–1602, when the queen was in her sixties. In this painting an ageless Elizabeth appears dressed as if for a masque, in a linen bodice embroidered with spring flowers and a mantle draped over one shoulder, her hair loose beneath a fantastical headdress.[69] She wears symbols out of the popular emblem books, including the cloak with eyes and ears, the serpent of wisdom, and the celestial armillary sphere, and carries a rainbow with the motto non sine sol iris ('no rainbow without the sun'). Strong suggests that the complex 'programme' for this image may be the work of the poet John Davies, whose Hymns to Astraea honouring the queen use much of the same imagery, and suggests it was commissioned by Robert Cecil as part of the decor for Elizabeth's visit in 1602, when a 'shrine to Astraea' featured in the entertainments of what would prove to be the 'last great festival of the reign'.[69][70]
Books and coins[edit]
Prior to the wide dissemination of prints of the queen in the 1590s, the common people of Elizabeth's England would be most familiar with her image on the coinage. In December 1560, a systematic recoinage of the debased money then in circulation was begun. The main early effort was the issuance of sterling silvershillings and groats, but new coins were issued in both silver and gold. This restoration of the currency was one of the three principal achievements noted on Elizabeth's tomb, illustrating the value of stable currency to her contemporaries.[71] Later coinage represented the queen in iconic fashion, with the traditional accompaniments of Tudor heraldic badges including the Tudor rose and portcullis.
Books provided another widely available source of images of Elizabeth. Her portrait appeared on the title page of the Bishops' Bible, the standard Bible of the Church of England, issued in 1568 and revised in 1572. In various editions, Elizabeth is depicted with her orb and sceptre accompanied by female personifications.[72]
'Reading' the portraits[edit]
It may be impossible for modern viewers to see the hundreds of images of Elizabeth as her subjects, courtiers, and rivals saw them. The portraits are steeped in classical mythology and the Renaissance understanding of English history and destiny, filtered by allusions to Petrarch's sonnets and, late in the reign, to Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. Dame Frances Yates points out that the most complexly symbolic portraits may all commemorate specific events or have been designed as part of elaborate themed entertainments.[47] The most familiar images of Elizabeth—the Armada, Ditchley, and Rainbow portraits—are all associated with unique events in this way. To the extent that the contexts of other portraits have been lost to scholars, so too the keys to understanding these remarkable images as the Elizabethans understood them may be lost in time. Even those portraits that are not overtly allegorical may be full of meaning to a discerning eye. Elizabethan courtiers familiar with the language of flowers and the Italian emblem books could have read stories in the blooms the queen carried, the embroidery on her clothes, and the design of her jewels.
According to Roy Strong,
Fear of the wrong use and perception of the visual image dominates the Elizabethan age. The old pre-Reformation idea of images, religious ones, was that they partook of the essence of what they depicted. Any advance in technique which could reinforce that experience was embraced. That was now reversed, indeed it may account for the Elizabethans failing to take cognisance of the optical advances which created the art of the Italian Renaissance. They certainly knew about these things but, and this is central to the understanding of the Elizabethans, chose not to employ them. Instead the visual arts retreated in favour of presenting a series of signs or symbols through which the viewer was meant to pass to an understanding of the idea behind the work. In this manner the visual arts were verbalised, turned into a form of book, a 'text' which called for reading by the onlooker. There are no better examples of this than the quite extraordinary portraits of the queen herself, which increasingly, as the reign progressed, took on the form of collections of abstract pattern and symbols disposed in an unnaturalistic manner for the viewer to unravel, and by doing so enter into an inner vision of the idea of monarchy.'[73]
Gallery[edit]
Queen and court[edit]
Unknown artist, The Family of Henry VIII, with Elizabeth on the right, c. 1545
Elizabeth and the Ambassadors, attributed to Levina Teerlinc, c. 1560
An Elizabethan Maundy, miniature by Teerlinc, c. 1560
The Family of Henry VIII, an Allegory of the Tudor Succession, 1572, attributed to Lucas de Heere
The Procession Portrait, c. 1600, attributed to Robert Peake the Elder
Portrait miniatures[edit]
Teerlinc, c. 1565
Hilliard, c. 1580
Hilliard, c. 1587
Hilliard, c. 1590
Hilliard, 1595–1600
Portraits[edit]
Unknown artist, c. 1559
c. 1560
Unknown artist, 1560–65
The Gripsholm Portrait, 1563
The Pelican Portrait, c.1575, by Nicholas Hilliard
Unknown artist, 1570s
The Schloss Ambras Portrait, unknown artist, 1575–80
The Welbeck or Wanstead Portrait, 1580–85, Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder. Elizabeth holds the olive branch of peace.
One of five known portraits attributed to John Bettes the Younger or his studio, c. 1585–90
The Drewe Portrait, 1580s, George Gower
In Parliament Robes, 1585–90, attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
Variant of the Armada Portrait, George Gower, c. 1588
The Jesus College Portrait, c. 1590, attributed to Hilliard
Another portrait at Jesus College, Oxford unknown artist, c. 1590
Portrait by an unknown artist, c. 1595
The Hardwick Hall Portrait, the Mask of Youth, Hilliard workshop, c. 1599
Portrait medallions and cameos[edit]
Portrait medallion, c. 1572–73, diplomatic gift to Adriaen de Manmaker, appointed Treasurer General of the province of Zeeland on 20 October 1573.[74]
Sir Christopher Hatton wearing a cameo of the queen, 1589, unknown artist (?after Ketel)
Sir Francis Drake wearing the Drake Pendant, a cameo of the queen. Gheeraerts the Younger, 1591
Drawings[edit]
Preliminary chalk sketch for a portrait of Elizabeth I, Zuccaro, c. 1575
Design for the obverse of a Great Seal for Ireland (never made), pen and ink wash over pencil, Hilliard, c. 1584
Pen and ink drawing on vellum by Isaac Oliver, c. 1592–95
Prints and coins[edit]
Coloured frontispiece to Christopher Saxton's Atlas of England and Wales, 1579
Coloured engraving, Coram Rege roll, 1581
Engraving based on the Oliver pattern of c. 1592
Elizabeth as Rosa Electa, Rogers, 1590–95
Engraving by William Rogers from the drawing by Oliver c. 1592
Engraving c. 1592–95 by Crispijn de Passe from the drawing by Oliver, with later inscription
Irish groat of 1561. Coins were of course the main way the mass of her people received images of Elizabeth.
Gold half-pound of 1560–61
Illuminated manuscripts[edit]
Illuminated initial membrane, Court of King's Bench: Coram Rege Roll, Easter Term, 1572
Coram Rege Roll, Easter Term, 1584
Charter of Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Ashbourne, Hilliard, 1585
Coram Rege Roll, Easter Term, 1589
See also[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Elizabeth I of England. |
Notes[edit]
- ^ abArnold 1978
- ^ abcStrong 1987, pp. 14–15
- ^Waterhouse (1978), pp. 25–6. This was in notable contrast to France, in particular, where smaller portraits remained more typical until Henry IV of France came to power in 1594.
- ^image of a copy Waterhouse:19–22, who points out that only very high ranking persons could enter the room where it was when the court was in residence at Whitehall. But artists could probably have gained access during the long periods the monarch was elsewhere; certainly there are many apparent copies of the figure of Henry from this work.
- ^Waterhouse:19
- ^Waterhouse, p. 36
- ^Fletcher, Jennifer in: David Jaffé (ed), Titian, pp. 31–2, The National Gallery Company/Yale, London 2003, ISBN1-85709-903-6
- ^Image It came from Philip's aunt Mary in Brussels, presumably as a loan. Fletcher, op. cit. pp. 31 and 148. It was presumably returned by or after Mary I's death in 1558, as it is in a Spanish royal inventory of 1600. Prado:398–99 (#411). The painting has returned to London for an exhibition at the National Gallery until January 2009
- ^For analysis of this trend see Levey (1971, Ch. 3, and Trevor-Roper (1976) Ch. 1 and 2.
- ^Waterhouse (1978), pp. 27–8. For his relationship with the Habsburgs, see Trevor-Roper (1976) passim, who also covers those of Leone Leoni and Titian in detail.
- ^Waterhouse (1978), p. 28. Surviving portraits include those of Sir Thomas Gresham and Sir Henry Lee, who was later to commission the Ditchley Portrait.
- ^And even in Italy his best portraits were routinely attributed to Titian or Moretto, for example what has always been his most famous work, the so-called Titian's Schoolmaster, now in Washington but previously in the Palazzo Borghese in Rome. Penny:194–5 on his life and style, 196–7 on his reputation. Freedberg (1993), pp. 593–5 analyses his portrait style.
- ^In an extended discussion, Michael Levey says Bronzino showed the ducal family 'so wrought and congealed that there is nothing of living tissue left in them. Their hands have turned to ivory, and their eyes to pieces of beautifully cut, faceted jet.' Levey (1971), pp. 96–108 — quotation from p. 108. See also Freedberg (1993), pp. 430–35
- ^Blunt, pp. 62–64
- ^Gaunt, 37.
- ^Quotation from Hilliard's Art of Limming, c. 1600, in Nicholas Hilliard, Roy Strong, 1975, p.24, Michael Joseph Ltd, London, ISBN0-7181-1301-2
- ^Strong 1977, p. 16
- ^ ab'Portrait of a royal quest for a husband'. The Independent, (London), Nov 1, 2007. Retrieved on 24 October 2008.
- ^Strong 1987, p. 23
- ^In these portraits Elizabeth may be wearing mourning for her sister Mary; see commentary on a portrait (Image) of Mary, Queen of Scots in a similar black gown and French hood with the cornet or bongrace pinned up at 'Mary Queen of Scots (1542 - 1587) c. 1558'. Historical Portraits Image Library. Archived from the original on 2008-10-16. Retrieved 2008-11-08., where the costume is compared to Elizabeth's in the Clopton portrait type.
- ^Doran 2003b, p. 177
- ^This newly revealed portrait was sold at Sotheby's, London, for £2.6 million in November 2007.Reuters news story
- ^Strong 1987, pp. 55–57
- ^The portrait is signed 'H.E.' and the artist formerly identified as the 'Monogrammist H.E.' is now generally assumed to be Hans Eworth (Hearn 1995, p. 63). Strong had earlier attributed the painting to Joris Hoefnagel (Strong 1987, p. 42).
- ^Doran 2003b, p. 176
- ^Hearn 1995, pp. 81–82
- ^Doran 2003b, pp.185–86
- ^Strong 1987, p. 42
- ^ abcStrong 1987, p. 79–83
- ^Reynolds, Hilliard and Oliver, pp. 11–18
- ^Strong 1975, p.4
- ^Pelican and Phoenix research
- ^Strong, 1983, pp. 62 & 66
- ^So-called from its location at Cobham House, much later the seat of the Earls of Darnley; see Strong 1987 p. 86
- ^ abcStrong 1987, p.85
- ^Cooper and Bolland (2014), p. 147
- ^Cooper and Bolland (2014), pp. 162-167
- ^National Portrait Gallery (2014). 'Making Art in Tudor Britain: 'Darnley' portrait'. Retrieved 28 September 2014.
- ^Strong 1987, pp. 91–93
- ^Strong 1987, p. 91
- ^Yates, pp. 50–51.
- ^E[dwin] Greenlaw, Studies in Spenser's Historical Allegory, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1932, quoted in Yates, p. 50.
- ^See Hearn 1995, p. 85; Strong 1987, p. 95
- ^Although Strong attributed the painting to Cornelis Ketel in 1969 and again in 1987 (Strong 1987 p. 101), closer examination has revealed that the painting is signed and dated on the base of the globe 1583. Q. MASSYS | ANT (for 'of Antwerp'). (See Hearn 1995, p. 85)
- ^Hearn, p. 85; Strong 1987 p. 101
- ^Doran 2003b, p. 187
- ^ abYates, p. 115
- ^Yates pp. 115, 215–216
- ^Strong 1987, p. 113
- ^Yates, p. 216
- ^ abcdStrong 1987, Gloriana, p. 130–133
- ^Hearn 1995 p. 88
- ^This version was heavily overpainted in the later 17th century, which complicates attribution and may account for several differences in details of the costume. See Arnold, Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd, pp. 34–36
- ^Cooper and Bolland (2014), pp. 151-154
- ^Hearn 1995, p. 88
- ^Andrew Belsey and Catherine Belsey, 'Icons of Divinity: Portraits of Elizabeth I' in Gent and Llewellyen, Renaissance Bodies, pp. 11–35
- ^Strong 1984, p. 51
- ^Strong 1987, p. 104
- ^Strong 1987, pp. 125–127
- ^Strong 1977, pp. 70–75
- ^Strong 1987, pp. 135–37.
- ^Strong 1987, p. 143
- ^ abcStrong 1987, p. 147
- ^ De Maisse: a journal of all that was accomplished by Monsieur De Maisse, ambassador in England from King Henri IV to Queen Elizabeth, anno domini 1597, Nonesuch Press, 1931, p. 25-26
- ^Sotheby's Catalogue L07123, Important British Paintings 1500–1850, November 2007, p. 20
- ^Arnold 1978
- ^Strong 1987, pp. 162–63
- ^Strong, Roy C. Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I. Germany: Thames and Hudson, 1987. pg. 148
- ^ abStrong 1987, pp. 157–160
- ^Strong 1977, pp. 46–47
- ^Doran 2003a, p. 52
- ^Doran 2003a, p. 29
- ^Strong (1999), p. 177
- ^'A historical and important English/Dutch 20KT gold-framed Elizabethan portrait miniature pendant, Christie's'. Retrieved 6 April 2012.. The Zeeuws Museum dates the medallion to 1572–73.
References[edit]
- Arnold, Janet: 'The 'Coronation' Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I', The Burlington Magazine, CXX, 1978, pp. 727–41.
- Arnold, Janet: Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd, W S Maney and Son Ltd, Leeds 1988. ISBN0-901286-20-6
- Blunt, Anthony, Art and Architecture in France, 1500–1700, 2nd edn 1957, Penguin
- Cooper, Tarnya; Bolland, Charlotte (2014). The Real Tudors : kings and queens rediscovered. London: National Portrait Gallery. ISBN9781855144927.
- Freedberg, Sidney J., Painting in Italy, 1500–1600, 3rd edn. 1993, Yale, ISBN0-300-05587-0
- Gaunt, William: Court Painting in England from Tudor to Victorian Times. London: Constable, 1980. ISBN0-09-461870-4.
- Gent, Lucy, and Nigel Llewellyn, eds: Renaissance Bodies: The Human Figure in English Culture c. 1540–1660Reaktion Books, 1990, ISBN0-948462-08-6
- Hearn, Karen, ed. Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530–1630. New York: Rizzoli, 1995. ISBN0-8478-1940-X (Hearn 1995)
- Hearn, Karen: Marcus Gheeraerts II Elizabeth Artist, London: Tate Publishing 2002, ISBN1-85437-443-5 (Hearn 2002)
- Kinney, Arthur F.: Nicholas Hilliard's 'Art of Limning', Northeastern University Press, 1983, ISBN0-930350-31-6
- Levey, Michael, Painting at Court, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1971
- Penny, Nicholas, National Gallery Catalogues (new series): The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume 1, 2004, National Gallery Publications Ltd, ISBN1-85709-908-7
- Museo del Prado, Catálogo de las pinturas, 1996, Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Madrid, ISBN84-87317-53-7 (Prado)
- Reynolds, Graham: Nicholas Hilliard & Isaac Oliver, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1971
- Strong, Roy: The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture, 1969, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London (Strong 1969)
- Strong, Roy: Nicholas Hilliard, 1975, Michael Joseph Ltd, London, ISBN0-7181-1301-2 (Strong 1975)
- Strong, Roy: The Cult of Elizabeth, 1977, Thames and Hudson, London, ISBN0-500-23263-6 (Strong 1977)
- Strong, Roy: Artists of the Tudor Court: The Portrait Miniature Rediscovered 1520–1620, Victoria & Albert Museum exhibit catalogue, 1983, ISBN0-905209-34-6 (Strong 1983)
- Strong, Roy: Art and Power; Renaissance Festivals 1450–1650, 1984, The Boydell Press;ISBN0-85115-200-7 (Strong 1984)
- Strong, Roy: 'From Manuscript to Miniature' in John Murdoch, Jim Murrell, Patrick J. Noon & Roy Strong, The English Miniature, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1981 (Strong 1981)
- Strong, Roy: Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, Thames and Hudson, 1987, ISBN0-500-25098-7 (Strong 1987)
- Strong, Roy: The Spirit of Britain, 1999, Hutchison, London, ISBN1-85681-534-X (Strong 1999)
- Trevor-Roper, Hugh; Princes and Artists, Patronage and Ideology at Four Habsburg Courts 1517–1633, Thames & Hudson, London, 1976, ISBN0-500-23232-6
- Waterhouse, Ellis; Painting in Britain, 1530–1790, 4th Edn, 1978, Penguin Books (now Yale History of Art series)
- Yates, Frances: Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century, London and Boston: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1975, ISBN0-7100-7971-0
Further reading[edit]
- Connolly, Annaliese, and Hopkins, Lisa (eds.), Goddesses and Queens: The Iconography of Elizabeth, 2007, Manchester University Press, ISBN978-0719076770