"Queen Elizabeth I: the Armada Portrait," circa 1588; English School (artist unknown); oil on panel; 44-1/2 by 50 inches. (Private Collection)

RICHMOND, VA.- The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts will commemorate the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, with "Rule Britannia!," a major exhibition of 16th- and 17th-century paintings whose core will be unprecedented loans from the collection of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.
Another significant loan, which will introduce the exhibition, will be one of the finest portraits in existence today of Queen Elizabeth I, known to history as the virgin queen and in whose honor Virginia was named. Called the Armada portrait, the painting is still in the hands of descendants of the godson of English naval hero Sir Francis Drake (1540?-1596) and has never before been exhibited in the United States. Lire la suite http://www.artdaily.com/section/news/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=19858

"Queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson," 1633, by Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599-1641); oil on canvas; 86-1/4 by 53-1/16 inches. From the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington. (Photo by Lyle Peterzell)