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+--- Thread: The Rainbow Portrait and the Faery Queen (/showthread.php?tid=680)
The Rainbow Portrait and the Faery Queen - Paul Ferguson - 10-03-2023
"This work re-interprets the symbolism of the emblematic "Rainbow" portrait (c. 1600) of Elizabeth I. The traditional title comes from the identification of the rainbow in the portrait as that of Genesis 9:13. In fact, as this work demonstrates, it is the philosophers' rainbow, a cryptonym for the colors--black, red, white--of the three stages of alchemic transmutation: purification, illumination, perfection. Elizabeth is represented as the Faery Queen, the alchemical monarch."
Robert Gibson Robertson III
Louisiana State Univ.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/6549/
Full text available with the Download button
RE: The Rainbow Portrait and the Faery Queen - Paul Ferguson - 10-04-2023
I suspect a similar alchemical colour symbolism is at work in the Paston Treasure - see ‘The Pastons’.