60 Years Of The Queen

Queen over 60 years: Portraits showing the changing face of the British Monarch go on display to mark Diamond Jubilee

When yours is one of the most famous faces in the world, you probably make the most of every opportunity for a bit of shut-eye.

A striking photograph of the Queen with her eyes closed has been converted to a hologram to be projected on to art gallery walls.

Photographer Chris Levine was asked to make his unusual portrait three-dimensional – and larger than life – to mark next year’s Diamond Jubilee.

Unseen Queen: Chris Levine's Lightness of Being features in The Queen: Art and Image exhibition to mark the monarch's Diamond Jubilee

But Her Majesty will also appear in a variety of more conventional formats as 60 images spanning her six decades on the throne are unveiled by the National Portrait Gallery today.

They range from provocative and controversial depictions by the likes of the Sex Pistols and Gilbert and George to majestic portraits from Pietro Annigoni and Annie Leibovitz.

Her Majesty is shown looking youthful and glamorous in a 1952 photograph by Dorothy Wilding, and cradling the Duke of York as a baby in an intimate shot captured by Cecil Beaton in 1960.

A picture from 1971 by Patrick Lichfield shows a casual, laughing woman on board HMY Britannia, while Andy Warhol’s 1985 portrait of the monarch is a twist on a much more familiar pose.

Yellow fever: Justin Mortimer's unusual portrait of the Queen disembodies the sovereign ruler

Despair: The Queen after the fire at Windsor Castle and an image from the 1980s created by Andy Warhol

Through the ages: Elizabeth on HMY Britannia in the 1970s and the Queen holdind Prince Andrew in the 1960s

Justin Mortimer painted the Queen’s head floating away from her body in 1998, and her disbelief and despair over the fire that destroyed large parts of Windsor Castle is captured in a striking Reuters press photograph from 1992. A clip from the behind-the-scenes documentary Royal Family will also be shown publicly at the exhibition for what is believed to be the first time in 40 years.

Curator Paul Moorhouse said the Queen was ‘probably the most visually represented person ever to have lived in the whole of human history’ and described the collection as ‘far from being a formal or official view’.

Elegant: Dorothy Wilding's portrait

Regal: Another Dorothy Wilding portrait reveals the youthful monarch's radiance

He added: ‘You get a sense of the mask beginning to slip after the [Brixton] riots and an intruder [in the Queen’s bedroom in 1982].

‘Warhol [in 1985] shows the fracture between her public and private image.

‘In an uncertain time, she is a reassuring presence perhaps.’ The Queen: Art and Image exhibition will open at the National Gallery Complex in Edinburgh later this year and then go on show at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the National Museum in Cardiff and London’s National Portrait Gallery until October 2012.

Royal in the rain: Eve Arnold snaps a smiling Queen despite the gloomy weather

Classic Queen: Pietro Annigoni's haunting 1969 image captures the monarch in a defiant pose