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Home , Lady Katherine Grey, Levina Teerlinc, Portrait miniature

THE PORTRAIT OF AND HER SON: ICONOGRAPHIC MEDIEVALISM AS A LEGITIMATION STRATEGY*

Martin Spies

The Belvoir Miniature of Lady Katherine Grey

Whenever an allegedly authentic portrait of the Nine Days’ Queen (1537–1554) is discovered, it is sure to cause a minor media sensation in the Anglo-American world.1 Unlike the likenesses of her sister Jane, however, the portraits of Lady Katherine Grey (c. 1540–1568)2 have never, up to now, triggered a scholarly debate or excited the public’s interest. This is surprising, at least when con- sidering the complex iconography of the singular mother and child miniature, which is now in the Duke of Rutland’s collection at Belvoir Castle [Fig. 1]: it shows Lady Katherine wearing a of her husband as a pendant and carrying her son on her left arm while offering him a tiny apple.3 This portrait is not only the earliest case depicting a sitter wearing a miniature as a piece of jewellery;4 it is

* The original paper was also presented at the Muzeum Narodowe w Kielcach (Polish National Museum, Kielce) on 21 November 2008. 1 See for example Higgins Ch., “A Rare Portrait of Lady Jane Grey? Or just an ‘Appallingly Bad Picture’?”, The Guardian (11 November 2006) 13. 2 Lady Katherine Grey was the daughter of Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset and later , and Frances Brandon, a niece of King Henry VIII. To simplify matters Lady Katherine Grey will be referred to by her maiden name throughout this paper. For accounts of her life, see Davey R., The Sisters of Lady Jane Grey and their Wicked Grandfather (: 1911), Chapman H.W., Two Tudor Portraits: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and Lady Katherine Grey (London: 1960), and De Lisle L., The Sisters who would be Queen. The Tragedy of Mary, Katherine and Lady Jane Grey (London: 2008). The authenticity of the two portraits reproduced in Davey and Chapman is dubious. Cf. also Doran S., “Seymour [Grey], Katherine, Countess of Hertford” (http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/25157, accessed 7 October 2008). 3 Rutland collection, Belvoir Castle (inv. no. ‘Miniatures 59’). Cf. Auerbach E., (London: 1961) 55, 288, Murdoch J. – Murrell J. – Noon P.J. – Strong R., The English Miniature (New Haven–London: 1981) 76, Strong R. – Murrell V.J., Artists of the Tudor Court: The Portrait Miniature Rediscovered, 1520–1620 (London: 1983) 53, Coombs K., The Portrait Miniature in England (London: 1998) 26. 4 Scarisbrick D., Tudor and Jacobean Jewellery (London: 1995) 84–85, cf. also the miniature in the portrait called Lady Walsingham (1572) in Strong R., The English 166 martin spies

Fig. 1. [Col. pl. I (left)] Attributed to , Portrait Miniature of Lady Katherine Grey and her son, c. 1562/63. Vellum on card?, 5.10 cm circular. © Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire, UK / The Bridgeman Art Library. also the earliest autonomous portrait of a mother and her child in Eng- lish outside the realm of religious art (i.e. donor portraits). Nowadays this miniature (as well as an earlier one showing Lady Katherine in her late teens [Fig. 11a])5 is usually attributed to Levina

Icon: Elizabethan & Jacobean Portraiture, Studies in British Art (London–New Haven: 1969) 171. 5 Victoria and Albert Museum, London (inv. no. P.10–1979). The museum also owns a much touched up copy of this miniature (inv. no. P.21–1954), which is wrongly