The image of Elizabeth I has its own significant historiography, with each decade over the past half-century appropriating the legacy of paintings and prints to discuss current issues of historical and social enquiry. Most recently, the representation of Elizabeth after her death, from her monument in the Abbey to the latest film, has been the subject of several monographs. This paper looks again at the diverse original contexts of these images, both in terms of physical space and of ideological intention, and places sculptural depiction more centrally than is often credited.

In the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum is a drawing on two attached pieces of parchment measuring 68 by 44 cm, clearly carried out entirely by one hand (Fig. 1). The image is drawn in pen, with some applied wash, but it is possible that some silverpoint technique has also been used. Sharply incised lines around many of the figures suggest the intention of getting back to the ground beneath the preparation, to create the effects of highlights or perhaps to float colour or gold into these indentations. It is signed ROBERTUS PYTE on two of the steps at the bottom left and dated 1546 on the step at the far right. At some point in its history, perhaps when it was framed for the first time, it would appear that the drawing was trimmed on both sides, the topmost architectural element (likely to have been a shaped gable with curved sides) cut through, the upper piece of parchment cut into a triangular shape and dark brown-coloured strips added with a later owner’s monogram. The drawing came to the Museum in 1864 for the price of one guinea, thanks to the good offices of C. J. Richardson, and is mentioned in the Bulletin of the Acquisitions of the Museums of Sciences and Arts at the end of the 1860s. Given the remit of collection policy at that time, it was undoubtedly acquired as an example of English mid-sixteenth-century design in the classical style. Its original function and purpose were never properly investigated.

The evidence of inventories has played a significant role in studies of the smaller houses of Tudor and Early Stuart England; important publications on vernacular architecture and certain regional studies have, with inventories as their major source, defined the extent and nature of low- and middle-income housing in England where often much of the physical evidence is now lost or fundamentally altered. These studies have made an important contribution to our understanding of consumer culture at this period, including the amount people were prepared to spend on building materials and the permanent fixtures of their houses. Their conclusions have often been cited in more general commentaries to corroborate the famous comments of William Harrison, first published in 1577, on rising living standards as evidenced in the buildings and their appointment that he saw around him. It could also be argued that studies emanating from the United States, examining American inventories from the seventeenth century and later and sometimes in comparison with English evidence, have explored, in considerably greater depth than those who have worked with purely English material, the potential embedded in the inventories of relatively modest households for the discussion of wider issues arising from the study of buildings, concerning space, material culture and gender.