What Did Lady Jane Grey Look Like? | The Nine Day Queen | Streatham Portrait

From History Calling

What did LADY JANE GREY look like? It has long been assumed that there is no surviving portrait of the first Queen of England, also known as the nine day Queen because of how brief her reign was and for decades, even centuries, historians instead had to rely on a supposed description of her and images of her family( including her sister Lady Katherine Grey and their parents Frances Brandon and Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk) which might offer some insight into Lady Jane Grey’s face. That all changed in 2006 however, when the National Portrait Gallery in London acquired a painting (known as the Streatham portrait) which it says is a copy of a lost original of Lady Jane Grey Dudley? In this Tudor history documentary from History Calling we’ll look at why the sole description of Lady Jane Grey’s appearance is a fraud, why some believe the Streatham portrait is this doomed teenaged Queen and why others are firmly against such an identification. We’ll examine the clothing and jewellery the sitter in this image wears (and what she isn’t wearing), the inscription above her right shoulder and what science can tell us about the age of the panel on which the portrait is painted and the type of paint used to create it. At the end I’ll give you my view on whether it is a portrait of Lady Jane Grey. Also in this video is a brief overview of the childhood, the marriage to Guildford Dudley and the fall of Lady Jane Grey, after her family’s botched attempt to put her on the throne. This ultimately led to her becoming one of the Tudors’ greatest tragedies as she was executed at the age of just 16 or 17 in February 1554 at the Tower of London and on the orders of her cousin, Queen Mary I. The life of Lady Jane Grey may have been short, but she continues to fascinate nearly half a millennium after her death.