One of my absolute favourites. 🌈 Before recent research, the Rainbow Portrait of Elizabeth I at Hatfield House was long understood as a powerful late-reign image celebrating the queen’s wisdom and authority. The rainbow, held with the Latin motto Non sine sole iris (“No rainbow without the sun”), cast Elizabeth as the source of peace and stability. Her gown, embroidered with eyes and ears, proclaimed her as the all-seeing, all-hearing monarch, while the serpent on her sleeve symbolised wisdom a