A customer who taught at a nearby university noticed an old oil-on-oak painting hanging as part of the decor in the Elizabethan Gardens gift shop in Raleigh, N.C. It had been purchased at a New York City gallery more than 60 years ago and given to the Elizabethan Gardens in the 1950s. An East Carolina University conservator identified it as a 1592 painting of Queen Elizabeth I. The Gardens has loaned the painting to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., but will eventually have to decide whether to sell it or find a safe place for the valuable portrait to be displayed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo: Auction Central News | The Elizabethan Gardens, Ray Matthews; Photographer