structural:summarization
Appearance

Contemporary sources praise Eleanor's beauty. Even in an era when ladies of the nobility were excessively eulogised and praised, their praise of her was undoubtedly sincere, though probably based on hearsay, while is some cases, the reference is only implied. The medieval German songs known as Carmina Burana praise "England's Queen", and a minnesinger refers to "The sweet young queen". Benoit de Sainte-Maure wrote of the "Queen of Beauty and largesse" in the Roman de Troie, while Philippe de Thaun wrote "God save Lady Eleanor, Queen, who is the arbiter of honour, wit and beauty". When she was young, she was described as perpulchra —more than beautiful. When she was around 30, Bernard de Ventadour, a noted troubadour, called her "gracious, lovely, the embodiment of charm", extolling her "lovely eyes and noble countenance" and declaring that she was "one meet to crown the state of any king". William of Newburgh emphasised the charms of her person, and even in her old age Richard of Devizes described her as beautiful, while Matthew Paris, writing in the 13th century, recalled her "admirable beauty", a common practice at the time, and "a woman of wonderful appearance, more beautiful than moral" and a "wonderful lady, most beautiful and astute". Richard of Devizes was similarly exuberant, but not all were in agreement. William of Tyre dismissed her as " uxorem quae una erat de fatuis mulieribus ". Another chronicler describes her as avenante, vaillante, courtoise.

In spite of all these words of praise, no one left a detailed description of Eleanor, for instance the colour of her hair and eyes are unknown. Such details were of little interest to contemporary chroniclers, portraiture was not a characteristic of the time with no attempt at realism, while descriptions were largely rhetorical. Despite this, many biographers have attempted to describe her, and Elizabeth Chadwick dismisses all these as fantasy or based on misinformation. The effigy on her tomb (almost certainly not a true portrait) shows a tall and large-boned woman with brown skin. Her seal of c. 1152 shows a woman with a slender figure, but these were impersonal images intended to convey authority. Images of Eleanor are common throughout history but since there are none from her lifetime, these are purely speculative. Some romanesque carvings, such as those at the Cloisters in New York and Chartres and Bordeaux cathedrals have been attributed to her but these cannot be substantiated, while completely erroneous claims from medieval art have frequently been used to illustrate articles and books about her, such as a queen from the 14th century Codex Manesse. The stained glass window in Poitiers Cathedral with a donor portrait of Eleanor is not original but a nineteenth-century restoration by Adolphe Steinheil. Two of the commonest claims have been the fresco in the chapel of at St. Radegonde at Chinon and a donor portrait of a kneeling woman in a twelfth-century psalter, which has led to it becoming known as the Eleanor Psalter.