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  Malcolm September 5, 2013 at 9:56pm

  Here's the story:

  Mysterious snake appears in painting of Queen Elizabeth I

  A mysterious image of a coiled snake has appeared in a 16th century painting of Queen Elizabeth I, according to the National Portrait Gallery.

  12:08PM GMT 04 Mar 2010

  The serpent was depicted being clasped in the Tudor monarch's fingers in the original version of the work - but it was painted over at the last minute and replaced with a more decorative bunch of roses.

  

  The mysterious image of a coiled snake that appeared in a 16th century painting of Queen Elizabeth I

  Deterioration over time has meant the snake has revealed itself once more, with its outline now visible on the surface.

  The portrait was created by an unknown artist in the 1580s or early 1590s.

  The image has not been on display at the London gallery since 1921 but it will form part of an exhibition titled Concealed and Revealed: The Changing Faces of Elizabeth I, from March 13 to September 26.

  A serpent was sometimes used to reflect wisdom, prudence and reasoned judgment, but the scaly creatures are also linked to notions of Satan and original sin.

  The gallery suggested the snake's removal may have been due to the ambiguity of the emblem.

  An artist's impression has been created of what the snake could have looked like, with infra-red technology revealing the changes in the initial design.

  A statement from the gallery said: ''The snake is mainly black but has greenish blue scales and was almost certainly painted from imagination.''

  The image of the monarch covers a portrait of another woman, whose identity is unknown.

  X-ray photography showed a female head facing in the opposite direction and in a higher position than the queen.

  The eyes and nose of the first face are visible where paint has been lost from Elizabeth's forehead.

  The gallery believes the unfinished portrait was by a different painter, showing how 16th century panels were sometimes recycled by artists.

  The unknown woman appears to have been wearing a French hood, fashionable in 1570-1580s, suggesting that there may have been a few years before the panel was re-used for the portrait of Elizabeth I.
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  1 darkstar September 4, 2013 at 10:52pm

  "Elizabeth" means A-LIZARD'S-BIRTH.
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    Malcolm > 1 darkstar September 5, 2013 at 12:48am

    And she is related to Dracula, as is George W. Bush and John Kerry. The blood is the life. I guess.
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      Malcolm > Malcolm September 5, 2013 at 1:12am

      
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        Si > Malcolm September 5, 2013 at 7:59pm

        Hi Malcolm,

        Can you please post the link for this "family tree"?  
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          Malcolm > Si September 5, 2013 at 10:02pm

          Evil Seed: Bush and Kerry are Related to Dracula (Vlad the Impaler)

          Infowars.com October 25, 2004 They're both members of the Skull and Bones (click here) and, as shown in their family tree (click here), they're cousins. Now Ancestry.com reveals that Bush and Kerry are not only related to Prince Charles, but to their common ancestor, Vlad the Impaler, the real Count Dracula (click here).

           

          Ancestry.com
          All family trees take surprising twists and turns. But for sheer irony, nothing can match the paradox linking Dracula to Bush and Kerry. As illustrated above, the common link is the Royal House of Windsor – an ancient line that descends from princes and spawned generations of American elite.

          Bush vs. Kerry? They're distant cousins Genealogy buffs claim political rivals are linked

          By Matt Sedensky

          HONOLULU - Democratic presidential candidates are constantly being compared to the current commander in chief. Now, two genealogy buffs say they have proof President Bush and the current Democratic front-runner share similarities thicker than water.

          Bruce and Kristine Harrison, Hawaii-based publishers of historical databases, traced back the family histories of Bush and Democratic Sen. John Kerry.

          The result? They're cousins.

          Well, 16th cousins, three times removed, to be exact. But cousins, nonetheless.

          Truth be told, one might find such distant family ties between Bush and any of the four other major Democratic candidates.

          The link between the president and the Rev. Al Sharpton might date back a bit further, Bruce Harrison said, but tracing ancestries helps illuminate a greater message on human interconnectedness.

          "I believe everybody on the planet is related if you go back far enough," said Harrison, 51, whose Millisecond Publishing in Kamuela puts out a line of ancestral history CDs. He and his wife have spent the last eight years compiling information from hundreds of genealogical books and periodicals. "We're setting the stage for others to explore their curiosity," he said.

          Other big-name ancestors Harrison says the search through family trees also turned up other big-name ancestors of Kerry and Bush. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is the president's ninth cousin, twice removed, while Kerry can count Johnny Appleseed as his sixth cousin, six times removed. Both the president and the Massachusetts senator can claim ties to figures ranging from Charlemagne to Walt Disney to Marilyn Monroe, Harrison said.

          For an average user of the Family Forest software, it could be more difficult to find such well-known links, but Harrison says he believes everyone can find some ancestral information in the database.

          As for the political adversaries' kinship, the only reunion in store seems to be a debate, should Kerry win his party's nomination. A Bush campaign spokeswoman said she had no comment on the issue. A message left with Kerry's spokesman was not returned.

          'Just bragging rights' The Honolulu County Genealogical Society's Mary Ann Bolton said she wasn't too impressed with those who troll family trees looking for star-studded connections.

          "I don't really put too much into that," she said. "That's just bragging rights."

          Harrison said his motivation in finding the link wasn't political, nor was it purely curiosity. Since publicizing the Bush-Kerry relation, the number of daily visits to his Web site has more than tripled.