2nd Spanish Armada 1596. Spain and England had been at war for nearly twelve years with neither side gaining the upper hand. The result of the intervention of Philip II in the religious war in France in support of the Catholic League, meant that Spanish forces had established coastal garrisons along the French and Flemish coast by the late 1580s. These bases had a huge strategic value because they allowed England to be threatened by the Spanish fleet and troops. England on the other hand had also intervened in France, but in support of King Henry IV of France, as a result of
Armada Portrait Armada Portrait The Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I of England is the name of any of three surviving versions of an allegorical panel painting depicting the Tudor queen surrounded by symbols of imperial majesty against a backdrop representing the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The combination of a life-sized portrait of Elizabeth I with a landscape format is "quite unprecedented in her portraiture", although allegorical portraits in this format, such as the "Family of Henry VIII: An Allegory of the Tudor Succession" (1572) attributed to Lucas de Heere, pre-date the "Armada Portrait". English art in this period was