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This anonymous portrait is one of several of Elizabeth I, who presided over England’s Renaissance (1533–1603). The Tudor rooms are the most satisfying in the gallery, and they contain two cases of miniature paintings, a popular genre of the time.

This is the only portrait of Britain’s most famous playwright known with certainty to have been painted during his lifetime (1564–1616).

Found in a drawer in 1914, this portrait of the great literary sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, from Yorkshire, was painted by their brother, Branwell. He appears as a faint image behind them.

This cartoon of Henry VII and his son Henry VIII by Hans Holbein (1537) was drawn for a large mural in the Palace of Whitehall, lost when the palace burnt down in 1698.

This painting of Lord Byron (1788–1824), by Thomas Phillips, depicts the poet and champion of liberty in Albanian dress. He died fighting with Greek insurgents against the Turks.

This 1799 portrait by Guy Head depicts Nelson after the Battle of the Nile. Apart from Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington, he was painted more often than any other British figure in history.

This picture of the poet laureate is by one of the pioneers of photography, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79). She was given a camera at the age of 48 and was noted for her memorable portraits of Tennyson, the naturalist Charles Darwin and the essayist Thomas Carlyle.

Photographic portraits took on a new lease of life in the 1960s, when photographers themselves became stars. Norman Parkinson, who took this picture of the Beatles, was one ofVogue ’s favourite fashion photographers.

The feminist author ofThe Female Eunuch is brilliantly captured by Portuguese artist Paula Rego, who spent a year as artist-in-residence at the Gallery.

Today’s famous are more likely to sit for a photographer than a painter. This revealing portrait of the former British prime minister by Helmut Newton allows you to study her in a way you would never dare in real life.