Call me old-fashioned, but generally I find that good art makes for good exhibitions. Which is why, alas, this show was always destined for failure.

It tells the ostensibly stirring tale of Elizabethan England through portraits of the queen, her courtiers and subjects. But the trouble is – though the era was one of great advances in science, finance, architecture, poetry, drama, and exploration – art remained stuck in the Middle Ages.

Take the portraits of Elizabeth herself: stiff, flat, linear, and with neck ruffs so tight they might choke her. Nicholas Hilliard’s "Ermine Portrait" from 1585 is typical. Far more attention is lavished on the queen’s ruby pendant and voluminous, black dress with gold beads than on probing her psyche through a meaningful look on her face. Elizabeth is rendered as an over-decorated Christmas tree.