The sitter could have been a number of Lady Ratcliffes. Sir Robert Ratcliffe, Ist Earl of Sussex (1483–1542), had three wives, of which the third, Mary, is most possible. Art historian K. T. Parker tentatively favoured his son Henry's wife Lady Elizabeth Howard (d. c. 1536), daughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and his second wife, Elizabeth Tilney, as the most plausible sitter, since Holbein drew other members of the Howard family. That would make this woman Anne Boleyn's Aunt. Anne's maternal grandfather, the 2nd duke, was twice married, first to Agnes Tilney. Anne's mother, Elizabeth Howard, was born circa 1480. The Duke took for his second wife, after Agnes's death, Elizabeth Tilney, and this Elizabeth was her daughter, born sometime around 1513. Reference * K. T. Parker, The Drawings of Hans Holbein at Windsor Castle, Oxford: Phaidon, 1945, OCLC 822974, p. 41.

By Dr. Martin Maw The life of Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1532-88) was every bit as opulent and complex as one of the grand dresses in which Elizabeth I was pictured wearing in her pomp, a Gloriana presiding over the vast hive of the Tudor court. Dudley knew that hive inside out: its drones, its honeyed talk and the potentially lethal stings of its intrigues, and most of all its Queen. Perhaps the most ambiguous figure in English royal history, Dudley was more than a friend but less than a full consort to his virgin monarch, a male confidant on intimate terms with the most powerful woman of her age.

From the miniature collection of Queen Victoria.