The National Portrait Gallery, London has been presented with "Equanimity," the first ever holographic portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, from the people of Jersey.
The portrait, by artist Chris Levine and holographer Rob Munday, was commissioned in 2004 by the States of Jersey to celebrate the island's 800-year relationship with the monarchy. The portrait will be on display as part of the Queen: Art and Image exhibition, opening at the Gallery on 17 May 2012.
The work given to the Gallery is a new, more technically refined version of the original "Equanimity," created in 2004 and will be seen for the first time at the Gallery. This new portrait is a photographic, lenticular image that produces an illusion of spatial depth and movement. It is the product of two sittings with Queen Elizabeth II during which over 10,000 individual photographic images were made using a tracking camera. Computer technology was then used to process this visual information in order to produce the final portrait. The original version of "Equanimity" has already toured the National Gallery Complex, Edinburgh, National Museums Northern Ireland, Belfast, and National Museum Cardiff as part of "The Queen: Art and Image" exhibition. The exhibition also includes the work "Lightness of Being" by Levine, an image derived from the sittings for "Equanimity" which, unconventionally, depicts the monarch with closed eyes.