It is a well known fact that Elizabeth the first was obsessed with her image and how people saw her. She was described as 'plain looking', a long nose and forehead, with a pinched expression. Her portraits are not what modern day society would describe as beauty, but in her day she was seen as an attractive woman.
As she aged, Elizabeth that demanded her portraits should compliment her features and make her appear younger. Up until she died, she invested in her appearance and wore lots of white base make up and extravagant head pieces. There aren't many portraits of her that show her true age and it's unfortunate that we never see what she actually looked like in her old age. Could her younger portraits be the same? Did she always ensure she looked more beautiful in her portraits than she really was? I found a few excerpts about how she acted about her images and this was one of them.
"When she ascended the throne at twenty five years of age her natural handsomeness way beyond dispute, but the preservation of her beauty became an obsession."
Bibliography:
http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/elizayoung.jpg (left images from this website)
http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/images/Eliza17.jpg
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