Lady jane grey or queen kateryn parr? National portrait gallery painting 6804: Analysis and historical context

In October 2006, the National Portrait Gallery in London acquired a late sixteenth-century, three-quarters length panel portrait of a woman, NPG 6804, and concluded that this work was a copy taken from an original likeness of the elusive Lady Jane Grey (c.1537–1554), portraying her in 1553 during her brief reign as nineday queen. Since then new historical research has been published which throws doubt on both this identification and on the dating of the original source image and supports an alternative identification—that of Kateryn Parr (c.1512–1548), sixth queen of Henry VIII. Although undoubtedly NPG 6804 was intended for sale as a portrait of Jane Grey, recent findings suggest that it is instead a copy of an original image of Kateryn Parr painted in the summer of 1544 at Hampton Court, possibly by a painter named John Hayes. The first goal of this article is to analyze these new findings and the ways in which they challenge previous conclusions. The second goal is to suggest the reasons for which the original portrait may have been commissioned. Toward these goals, the discussion undertakes to put the source painting and its purpose in an historical context and together with an examination of the indicators internal to the portrait apply them in support of this proposed alternative identification. Susan E. James ABOUT THE AUTHOR Susan E. James is an independent writer and researcher who earned her PhD at Cambridge University. She has written extensively in the fields of the humanities and social sciences, publishing over 30 peer-reviewed articles on various aspects of the humanities and three books on sixteenth-century English history: Kateryn Parr: The Making of a Queen (1999), The Feminine Dynamic in English Art, 1485–1603: Women as Consumers, Patrons and Painters (2009, nominated for the Berger Prize), and Women’s Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485–1603: Authority, Influence and Material Culture (2015). Her work on identifying the long portrait of Kateryn Parr (NPG 4451) in London’s National Portrait Gallery led to the relabeling of the portrait. This paper expands that work with a further exploration of portrait appropriation by late sixteenth-century painters to satisfy a market for images of royal Protestant women during the debate over the succession in the final years of Elizabeth I’s reign. PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT Which sixteenth-century queen of England is represented in the National Portrait Gallery painting NPG 6804? Is it the tragic nine-day queen Lady Jane Grey or Queen Kateryn Parr, the sixth and surviving wife of the notorious Henry VIII? This article seeks not only to identify the lady in the portrait but to suggest the circumstances that surrounded its commission. Although labeled “Lady Jane”, the painting is a copy of an earlier work and evidence provided by new research indicates that the original work is more likely to be a portrait of Kateryn Parr created in the seminal year 1544 when Parr was acting as Regent-General of England. NPG 6804 is not only a statement of Parr’s political power but presents evidence of her commitment to the English Renaissance, to English Church and to the new literature that supported it. James, Cogent Arts & Humanities (2018), 5: 1533368 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2018.1533368 © 2018 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license. Received: 25 September 2017 Accepted: 07 September 2018 First Published: 09 October 2018 *Corresponding author: Susan E. James, Independent Researcher 4534 Hillard Avenue La Canada, CA 91011 USA Email: searex@earthlink.net Reviewing editor: Hans Maes, University of Kent, UK Additional information is available at the end of the article

Abstract: In October 2006, the National Portrait Gallery in London acquired a late sixteenth-century, three-quarters length panel portrait of a woman, NPG 6804, and concluded that this work was a copy taken from an original likeness of the elusive Lady Jane Grey (c.1537Grey (c. -1554, portraying her in 1553 during her brief reign as nineday queen. Since then new historical research has been published which throws doubt on both this identification and on the dating of the original source image and supports an alternative identification-that of Kateryn Parr (c.1512Parr (c. -1548, sixth queen of Henry VIII. Although undoubtedly NPG 6804 was intended for sale as a portrait of Jane Grey, recent findings suggest that it is instead a copy of an original image of Kateryn Parr painted in the summer of 1544 at Hampton Court, possibly by a painter named John Hayes. The first goal of this article is to analyze these new findings and the ways in which they challenge previous conclusions. The second goal is to suggest the reasons for which the original portrait may have been commissioned. Toward these goals, the discussion undertakes to put the source painting and its purpose in an historical context and together with an examination of the indicators internal to the portrait apply them in support of this proposed alternative identification. Susan E. James ABOUT THE AUTHOR Susan E. James is an independent writer and researcher who earned her PhD at Cambridge University. She has written extensively in the fields of the humanities and social sciences, publishing over 30 peer-reviewed articles on various aspects of the humanities and three books on sixteenth-century English history: Kateryn Parr: The Making of a Queen (1999), The Feminine Dynamic in English Art, 1485-1603: Women as Consumers, Patrons and Painters (2009, nominated for the Berger Prize), and Women's Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485-1603: Authority, Influence and Material Culture (2015). Her work on identifying the long portrait of Kateryn Parr (NPG 4451) in London's National Portrait Gallery led to the relabeling of the portrait. This paper expands that work with a further exploration of portrait appropriation by late sixteenth-century painters to satisfy a market for images of royal Protestant women during the debate over the succession in the final years of Elizabeth I's reign.

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Which sixteenth-century queen of England is represented in the National Portrait Gallery painting NPG 6804? Is it the tragic nine-day queen Lady Jane Grey or Queen Kateryn Parr, the sixth and surviving wife of the notorious Henry VIII? This article seeks not only to identify the lady in the portrait but to suggest the circumstances that surrounded its commission. Although labeled "Lady Jane", the painting is a copy of an earlier work and evidence provided by new research indicates that the original work is more likely to be a portrait of Kateryn Parr created in the seminal year 1544 when Parr was acting as Regent-General of England. NPG 6804 is not only a statement of Parr's political power but presents evidence of her commitment to the English Renaissance, to English Church and to the new literature that supported it. Streatham", whose family "has been trying to convince the National Portrait Gallery to accept its authenticity since 1923", was that it represented the elusive Lady Jane Grey (c.1537Grey (c. -1554 painted during the nine days, 10-19 July 1553, she ruled as queen 11 November;Nolan, 2007).
The NPG accepted that identification and announced that, "it is a copy of a lost original, possibly created in Lady Jane's lifetime" (Higgins, 2006, 11 November). Such a verdict, however, left hanging the burden of proof as to the identity of the portrait's original source image, and this mutable identification and dating, tenuous at best, were controversial from the first (Higgins, 2006, 11 November). The NPG later adjusted its assessment and acknowledged that, "it was not painted from the life, or indeed made during Jane Grey's lifetime, but is a commemorative image created some forty years after her death" (NPG 6804, 2016b;Bolland & Cooper, 2014, p. 100;Nolan, 2007). It does indeed seem probable that the painting was meant to be sold as a commemorative likeness of Jane Grey intended to feed a market avid for portraits of the tragic nine-day queen during the last decade of Elizabeth I's reign when the succession was in question. Yet, idiosyncratic details of costume and jewelry internal to the portrait suggest that the original from which this copy was made dates from an earlier period and represents an entirely different subject. Thus, on the evidence discussed below, NPG 6804 would fall into the category of the many simulated images created at that time from a variety of earlier, appropriated face patterns none of which can be reliably identified as Jane Grey.
Since the purchase of the painting in 2006, a variety of new historical research has been published focusing on the fields of reformed religious literature, portraiture, and music during the final years of the reign of Henry VIII. Taken altogether, this new research appears to throw light on the purpose for which the original portrait was commissioned. It supports the hypothesis of an earlier date of the mid-1540s for the source image of NPG 6804 and of an alternative identification first suggested in print in 2009-that rather than Jane Grey, the painting is instead a later copy of a portrait of Kateryn Parr (c.1512Parr (c. -1548, sixth queen of Henry VIII (James, 2009, p. 125). The collective weight of this new research discussed below has further led to the possibility that the original source image of which this portrait is a copy was painted in the summer of 1544 at Hampton Court during the period (July through September) that Parr served as Regent-General and that the artist responsible may have been a painter named John Hayes (NPG, 2016c).

Queen Kateryn Parr and portraiture
Throughout her marriage to Henry, Kateryn Parr employed portraiture to display her personal image publicly as both announcement and reminder of her royal status among the competing cliques at court. Self-referencing portraits acted as statements of position and reinforcements of Kateryn's own authority at a court where she was not without enemies. After Elizabeth I, Parr commissioned more individual portraits of herself in her short, three-and-a-half-year reign than any other noblewoman of the sixteenth century, and she was the first English queen to use portraiture as a major propaganda tool (James, 2009, pp. 142-151).
Such a strategy can be seen in the surviving full-length painting (Figure 2, NPG 4451), which was in all likelihood commissioned in the winter of 1543-1544 to celebrate her union with the king (James, 1996). The crown-headed brooch the queen is wearing states unequivocally who she is and underlines the power that accrues to her royal position. Another image now at Sudeley Castle, this time a miniature painted during the following winter of 1544-1545, again foregrounds the queen's bond with the king by featuring a jeweled brooch displayed on her breast with his initial and his image enthroned (James, 2009, p. 150). Throughout her time as queen, Parr was "sensitive to the potential of her own figure" and its potency as a vehicle for propaganda (Coles, 2008, p. 11).
As with NPG 4451, the original pattern for NPG 6804 may also have been full-length and its purpose in 1544 would have been threefold. First, it would have been commissioned to celebrate the queen's appointment and subsequent service as the king's regent during his absence in France. It would also have functioned as an advertisement of the queen's skills as a scholar and her commitment to the reformed religion by acknowledging her efforts as author and translator with the publication on 25 April 1544 of her first printed vernacular work, "Psalms or Prayers taken from the Holy Scriptures", proposed here as the book the portrait's subject is holding in her left hand. On the cover is a line of gold ornamentation connecting two capital letters, "P" and "S" (Figure 1(a) & 1(b)), the standard abbreviation for "Psalms", or possibly "Psalm Prayers", a reference to "Psalms or Prayers" which is described in the queen's chamber accounts as a "boke of the psalme prayers" (National Archives (hereafter NA) E315/161, fol. 46, 1544). Finally, the portrait would have formed part of a multi-platform propaganda campaign of public events planned during the spring and early summer of 1544 in which the queen played a seminal role. This campaign, which employed visual and musical cues and co-opted aspects of the on-going publication of vernacular reformed liturgical material, was organized under the royal authority and focused on promoting national support for the king's expansive and expensive invasion of France launched in July of that year. At Henry's court, art was frequently employed as a tool of propaganda and its use in the promotion of the English military efforts of 1544 would be unsurprising. For example, one or more of four surviving sixteenth-century genre paintings created for the king in the Royal Collection may date from around this time. "The Embarkation of Henry VIII from Dover" (RCIN 405,793), "The Field of Cloth of Gold" (RCIN 405,794), "The Battle of the Spurs" (RCIN 406,784), and "The Meeting of Henry VIII and the Emperor Maximilian" (RCIN 405,800) focus on Henry's earlier assays into France and celebrate his image as a successful warrior-king. The famous wrestling match between the English and French kings featured in "The Field of Cloth of Gold" could certainly have acted as a metaphor for the approaching conflict. As visual announcements of Henry's plan to join with Hapsburg emperor Charles V to defeat his rival, Francois I, they fit with 1544's state-generated propaganda program.
Another collection of paintings which once hung in the hall at Cowdray House, Sussex, was commissioned shortly after the 1544 invasion by the king's master of the horse, Sir Anthony Browne, and depict stirring scenes from the 19 July-18 September siege and conquest of Boulogne (Fontana, 2015). The choice by the king of Kateryn's title as "Queen Katharine, Regentgeneral of the realm" in the summer of 1544 during his absence from England would also indicate that her role as regent had military overtones (State Papers, 1518-1547; (Letters & Papers [hereafter L&P], 19(i) no. 1035[88], 1544). Although the initial appointment of the queen to the regency on 7 July merely states that "the Queen shall be regent in [the King's] absence", the official commission signed four days later on 11 July granting her the power, together with two of her councilors, to issue warrants to the king's treasurers names her "Queen Katharine, Regentgeneral of the realm" (L&P, 19(i) nos 864 & 1035[88],1544). Edward Seymour, future Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of England, addresses her as "the Quenes Grace, Regente generall of England in the Kynges Ma tes absence" in a dispatch dated 2 September (L&P, 19(ii) no. 174, 1544).
That Kateryn saw herself as captain to Henry's general, keeping the peace at home while supporting his war efforts abroad, is apparent in the business that she undertook during his absence. She dealt with unrest on the Scottish border, ordering the destruction of the Scottish grain harvest and refusing the request of a 20-day truce from Scotland's own regent, Mary of Guise. She called for a general muster throughout the realm to raise 4,000 troops to send to France. She arranged ships, ordnance, and gunpowder for transport, requisitioned lead for armaments, ordered bridges repaired, handled deserters, dispatched food and money to the king, and weighed the loyalty of the changeable conspirator William Cunningham, fourth Earl of Glencairn, in his claims of support for the English crown. Military matters dominate the state proclamations that were issued during her regency and under her authority. In all of this, as his letters to her show, she was encouraged by her royal husband (For example, L&P, 19(i) nos 931, 937 & 19(ii) 35, 39, 1544).
The queen's martial preoccupations as regent were also addressed in the play, "Ralph Roister Doister", written for her by Nicholas Udall and first performed that same summer at Hampton Court (Udall, 1901). In this satire of the court featuring a raucous lampooning of a number of identifiable courtiers, Kateryn, herself, appears as the character "Kitte Custance", "this little quean" (Act 4, Sc. 8, line 27). Beset by an unwanted suitor, the playwright has Kitte lead a household army, swearing: "I myself will mounsire grand captain undertake" (Act 4, Sc. 8, line 30), encouraging her servants "On forward" into battle. Whereupon, they challenge the field. "Come away, by the masse she is mankine [masculine] . . . Rather than be slain, I will flee," yells her foe (Act 4,Sc. 8,lines 42,47). "To it again, my knightesses; down with them all," Kitte calls as she attacks, swearing, "So this field is ours, we have driven them all away . . . Ye shall see women's war" (Act 4, Sc. 6, line 33 & Sc. 8, lines 48, 54). Kateryn as Kitte subsequently routs the enemy and claims the day. Formatted as entertainment, Udall's comedy demonstrates that the queen's engagement with military matters -as the king's Monsieur Grand Captain-had become part of the conversational currency at court.
With all of these events in the summer of 1544 circulating around the queen, the commission of a portrait during these months depicting the acting Regent-General holding a book that she has just published, recently described as "one of the most important and influential acts of royal representation produced in the last four years of Henry's reign", a book, in fact, critical to both Henry's military propaganda and Henry's church, would be completely in keeping with Parr's actions during this crucial period (White, 2015, Autumn, pp. 554-575).

Historical context
The year 1544 was important for both the religious and military legacies of Henry VIII. In addition to the liturgical changes happening within the English church, 1544 saw the culmination of Henry's military aggressions against Scotland and France. In late 1542, the king had launched an invasion of Scotland, a conflict that went on for several years, punctuated by the defeat of the Scottish army at the battle of Solway Moss on 23 November 1542, by the death of the Scottish king, James V, three weeks later on 14 December, and finally by the sacking of Edinburgh in early May 1544 under the command of the king's brother-in-law Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford. Although a peace treaty between the two nations was signed at Greenwich on 1 July 1543, the Scots renounced it the following December. Yet on 1 July 1543, Henry was convinced he had won out over his northern foes and 11 days later on 12 July, full of his victory, he married his sixth wife, Kateryn Parr, in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court.
Having contracted a royal marriage in a time of war, the new queen quickly became a partner in the promotion of and preparation for the imminent invasion of France, an invasion that had for some time been in the planning stages between the English king and Emperor Charles V (L&P, 18(i) no. 397 & 18(ii) no. 467, 1543). The year 1544 was to see the fruition of the king's plans and Henry's choice of title for his new queen that same year as Regent-General highlights her involvement in these preparations. This was the year Henry achieved what he considered to be his greatest military victories, the English sacking and burning of Edinburgh-celebrated by bonfires, jubilant crowds, "and wine set in divers places" throughout London-and the invasion of France two months later under the royal command which saw the capture and garrisoning of the port of Boulogne (Wriothesley, 1875, pp. 147-148).
In preparation for his military adventure, Henry wrote his will settling the royal succession on his son but, under Kateryn's influence, bringing his two daughters back into the legitimate line of descent and naming his queen both Regent-General during his absence from England and guardian of his three children, all of whom were placed in her care at Hampton Court. The appointment of Kateryn Parr as regent and the trust the king displayed publicly by putting her in charge of his heirs created a precedent that caused great consternation among the religious conservatives at court who feared the queen's influence with the king, privately condemned her commitment to the reformed religion, and began to plot against her.
The queen's dedication to her husband's military cause found public expression in the publication of her "Prayer for men to say entering into battle", in which she declared that not only was the English cause morally just but that the nation had been given no choice and was thus "enforced to enter into war and battle" (Parr, 1544, p. Mi r;Mueller, 2011, p. 364). The inclusion of this particular prayer, a highly edited translation from Erasmus, in her first English vernacular work, "Psalms or Prayers", demonstrates that one purpose of the book was an encouragement of the king's military agenda (M. White, personal communication, 17 November 2015). But the queen was more than a partner in military propaganda. Her commitment to the reformed English church was active and outspoken. "Psalms or Prayers" was a translation and reworking of Psalmi sue precationes ex variis scripturae locis collectae, written in Latin by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and published in Cologne about 1525. The queen oversaw the release of a new Latin edition by the king's printer Thomas Berthelet on 18 April 1544, quickly followed by her own English version a week later. By 1608, the book had been released in 18 editions (James, 1999, pp. 200-204). "Psalms or Prayers" was part of a growing body of vernacular literature then being written in support of the reformed church, a work whose importance in the evolution of the English liturgy is only now being recognized. It has, in fact, been just in the last two decades that the full weight of Kateryn Parr's influence on and involvement in the religious and cultural changes that occurred during the final years of Henry VIII's reign have begun to be appreciated.
Both the religious Reformation and cultural Renaissance in England owe much to her energy and zeal and to her understanding of the social and political currents of the time. Kimberly Coles has commented that Parr "was a considerable force in the early Reformation" and "central to . . . the theological deliberations of the time" (Coles, 2008, pp. 45-46). Kateryn's enthusiastic support of reformed religious doctrine and her participation in the creation and dissemination of its printed vernacular propaganda caused conservative plots to percolate against her at court and nearly led to her arrest in 1546. But her contributions to England's secular culture were equally profound. She was both patron and subject of the first known stage comedy written in English, one that Shakespeare later used as source material for "The Taming of the Shrew" (James, 1999, Spring, pp. 49-62;James, 1999, pp. 177-81). The queen's support of education evidenced itself in her encouragement of the founding of Trinity College, Cambridge, by her royal husband. Her use of portrait and miniature painting for propaganda purposes, and her investment in the growth of musical composition at court have both been discussed in the publications noted (Harrison, 1991, pp. 1-20;James 1999, pp. 156-159).
For a woman born into the minor northern gentry, who had spent the majority of her adult life among the conservative society of the north, the flowering of her gifts at the court of Henry VIII was both remarkable and unparalleled. Additionally, the challenges posed by a sudden transition from Yorkshire widow to queen of England could not have been easy. It is a tribute to Parr's commonsense, intelligence, and innate sophistication that within a year of her marriage to the king and with no powerful family to support her, she had not only established herself as a power to be reckoned with at court but had gained the royal trust so completely that Henry had no hesitation in naming her both guardian of his children and Regent-General of his kingdom.
Seconded into the propaganda campaign focused on presenting the French invasion as a necessary act advocated by divine authority were a plethora of new vernacular religious works, among them the queen's "Psalms or Prayers", containing "A prayer for the king" (a reworking of a prayer for the Holy Roman Emperor by German Catholic reformer, Georg Witzel) that ultimately became part of the "Book of Common Prayer", together with "A prayer for men to say entering into battle" and "A psalm of thanksgiving", suitable for celebrating impending victory against the French (White, 2015, April, pp. 13-15;White 2015, Autumn, pp. 554-555). Together with the queen's publication, other seminal new literature supporting and expounding the reformed religion made its debut at this time with the publication of Archbishop Cranmer's "Exhortation unto prayer" on 27 May 1544 and the introduction of Cranmer's "Litany" into church services in the same month. That the queen's own copy of "Psalms or Prayers", now at Elton Hall, was bound in (although at a later date) with Cranmer's "Exhortation" suggests that they were considered as companion works meant to be used together (Sims, 2011, pp. 29-30).
The queen's "Psalms or Prayers" was published on 25 April 1544 and, according to recent research by David Skinner, the Ninth Psalm, "Against Enemies", was immediately set to music by Gentleman of the Royal Chapel, Thomas Tallis. Tallis first appears on the Lay Subsidy Rolls for the royal household and Chapel Royal in the same year that Parr became queen (NA: E179/69/36, 1543; Ashbee, 1993, p. 91). That Tallis was singled out by the queen to set her words to music suggests that she, together with Thomas Cranmer, acted as the composer's patrons (Skinner, 2016, p. 242). The work emerged as Gaude gloriosa Dei mater, one of the finest large-scale, six-part votive antiphons in existence, "a monumental statement of patriotism and national pride" (Corpus Christi College MS 566, n. d.;Skinner, 2016, pp. 233, 244). According to Skinner, its first performance would have been a "major public observance . . . staged in order to stir up [the king's] subjects to pray for the war effort" (Skinner, 2016, p. 243). The choice to feature a musical setting of Parr's prayer in such a public and dramatic way, characterized by Skinner as a grand spectacle, indicates the queen's importance to her husband's political, religious, and military plans. This significant event probably occurred during a special Rogationtide service in St. Paul's Cathedral held on Friday, 23 May, described by Windsor Herald Charles Wriothesley as a service "made in Pawles to the laude of God and prayse of the Kinges Majestie with Te Deum songe, and after a generall procession" (Skinner, 2016, pp. 243-244;Wriothesley, 1875, pp. 147-148). The "prayse of the Kinges Majestie" may refer to the use during the service of Parr's prayer for the king and her patronage of Tallis signals that, as with painting, she understood the power of music to propagandize and persuade.
The conjunction of all of these publication and performance activities within a month of each other was not coincidental. Cranmer's "Exhortation" does not, according to Kimberly Coles, "provide instructions in the form of private prayer." Of the vernacular prayer books produced to fill this gap, Coles identifies one as "Psalms or Prayers" (Coles, 2008, p. 48). Its companion effort was the "King's Primer", a book meant for private prayer and in the king's hands by May 1544 but not published until a year later, 2 months before the publication of Kateryn's second effort, "Prayers or Meditations". Evidence suggests that both the queen and Cranmer contributed to the "Primer", "published under the guise of being Henry's own work" (James, 1999, pp. 224-227). "Prayers or Meditations" was adapted by the queen from Thomas à Kempis's The Imitation of Christ and first published on 2 June 1545. It proved just as popular as "Psalms or Prayers" with 19 editions printed by 1595 (James, 1999, pp. 214-219). Each of these prayer books, two crafted by the queen and a third in which she probably collaborated, demonstrate her centrality to the creation of the emerging liturgy (White, 2017). They also illustrate the grasp that she had on both religious and political detail and her boldness in employing it.
Cranmer's "Exhortation" and "Litany", together with Parr's "Psalms or Prayers", were all published by the king's own printer, Thomas Berthelet, and Henry's familiarity with "Psalms or Prayers" is evidenced by an inscription on the pages of the queen's personal copy where under the royal coat of arms, the king has written: "remember thys writthter wen you doe praye for he ys yours noon can say naye" (Sims, 2011, pp. 27-30). Again according to Coles: "The publication history of these three books [the 'Litany', 'Psalms or Prayers', and [Parr's second work] 'Prayers or Meditations'] exposes the complicated operations of a state programme designed and deployed by the collective agencies of the king, the queen, the archbishop and the king's printer. It further shows the extent to which they assumed an active role in the reform agenda" (Coles, 2008, p. 47).
"Psalms or Prayers" demonstrates a fluidity and flexibility with language whose public expression was rare among women in the sixteenth century and Parr was justly proud of it. The queen's pride in her own achievement is evidenced by her orders for presentation copies to be given out at court, the description of their bindings matching that of the volume seen in NPG 6804. On 1 May 1544, Berthelet sent the queen a bill for eight of the "books of the psalm prayers, gorgeously bound and gilt on leather". Three days later on 4 May, a second bill was submitted for six more copies "likewise bound and gilt on leather" (NA: E315/161, fol. 46, 1544). Kateryn's clerk of the closet, William Harper, also presented a bill that October "for the hire of carts at sundry removings as for the Letany and Book of Psalmes for the Queen's Grace", an indication that together with the "Primer", "Exhortation", and "Litany", the queen considered "Psalms or Prayers" part of the new literary authority underpinning the rituals of the English Reformation, one to which she had so profoundly contributed and copies of which in leather bindings stamped with gilt she carried with her from residence to residence (L&P, 19(ii), 1544, p. 407).
"Psalms or Prayers" then served as both a work seminal to the religious authority of the English Church and as a vehicle of royal articulation endorsing the moral authority of the head of that church during wartime. The musical setting by Tallis of its Ninth Psalm, "Against Enemies", for public consumption rather than private performance reinforces the work's importance in the context of promoting a general belief in such moral authority and its significance to a particular moment in time. Initially published anonymously, the queen made certain that her authorship was recognized and acknowledged both through the gift of multiple handsomely bound presentation copies, and through a use of "the potential of her own figure", in this case the source image for NPG 6804, where the queen presents her book to the viewer in an echo of the familiar medieval meme of the donor offering their donation in their hand, a meme which frames the queen as both a pillar of the reformed church and a benefactor of the nation (NA: E315/161, fos 185, 201, 206, 1544;NA: E314/22, fol. 17, 1544;Rose-Troup, 1911, "Six Pamphlets", n.d.).

Artistic context
In 2006 when NPG 6804 came on the market, technical analyst Libby Sheldon at University College, London, examined the painting and came to the conclusion that the inscription "appears to have been put on at the same time at the rest of the paint" (Higgins, 2006, 16 January). This is hardly surprising as it is just one of many, many works (discussed below) sold during the last decade of Elizabeth I's reign, marketed as authentic portraits of Jane Grey but in fact using face patterns from earlier portraits of Kateryn Parr. Apart from the name "Lady Jayne" painted on a work executed nearly half a century after that short-lived queen's death, there is nothing about the iconography or imagery of NPG 6804 that would connect it to Jane Grey. Despite a plethora of claims made over the years, no authenticated portrait of Jane Grey has yet been discovered. In fact, analysis of the costume and jewelry worn by the subject of NPG 6804 suggests that the original from which this copy was taken dates not from the mid-1550s but from the first half of the 1540s, nearly a decade earlier, and is one of a series of mid-sixteenth-century works co-opted by later copyists at the turn of the seventeenth century to meet the demands of a market eager to buy pictures of the 16-year-old Protestant martyr (James, 2009, pp. 123-128).
An earlier article published in The Burlington Magazine discussed the process by which a copy (or copies) of a 1543-1544 portrait of Kateryn Parr became the template for a series of late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century paintings and engravings, all of them identified as "Lady Jane Grey" (James, 1996). The original full-length portrait (Figure 2 NPG 4451), now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, was given-probably by the queen, herself-to her cousin and lady-in-waiting, Maud Parr, Lady Lane, when that lady retired from royal service (James, 2004). Lady Lane took it with her to Glendon, the Lane family home in Northamptonshire, where it remained until the eighteenth century. It was bought by the National Portrait Gallery in 1965 and quickly re-labeled Jane Grey on the basis of later copies so identified (Strong, 1969, I, pp. 78-79 & II, plates 140, 142-144, 147-148). This full-length portrait of the queen had several later iterations and although the original portrait continued to be recognized in the Lane family as Queen Kateryn, by 1620 and probably earlier alternative versions of the work were being sold as "Lady Jane Grey" by copyists looking for likenesses to satisfy the demand of a burgeoning marketplace (James, 1996, pp. 20-24;James, 2009, pp. 125-126).
Evidence of such demand by a curious public is supported by the inclusion of an engraved portrait based on NPG 4451 that appears in a volume of plates purporting to be likenesses of famous people published in 1620. When bookseller Henry Holland published Herwologia Anglica, he insisted in the preface that he had taken great care to verify the likenesses and to be certain that these were derived from secure sources (Holland, 1620). Yet, the portrait he produced (Figure 3) of "Lady Jane Grey" was a bust-length variant of the long portrait of Kateryn Parr, complete with the crown-headed brooch listed on that queen's jewel list and probably a wedding gift to Kateryn from the king. This key piece of evidence demonstrates that less than 20 years from the date proposed for NPG 6804, Parr's portraits were being routinely copied and labeled "Jane Grey". That time frame for portrait appropriation can be pushed back even further into the final decade of Elizabeth's reign as NPG 6804 dates from about the mid-1590's and Holland's own source material could hardly have been the original work, safely ensconced at Glendon and securely identified as Kateryn Parr. It must have been yet another misidentified variant dating some years earlier. Other reproduced variants of the Parr full-length portrait, such as the Seaton Delaval and Jersey portraits, mostly of a later date, have also been consistently (and erroneously) labeled "Jane Grey" (James, 1996).
As for the artist who may have painted the original image from which NPG 6804 was taken, in the privy purse expenses of the Lady Mary (later Mary I), an entry for November 1544 shows £5 paid to "one John that drue her grace in a table" (Madden, 1831, p. 168;NPG 4451 2016a). This has generally been accepted as a reference to the half-length portrait of Mary (NPG 428, 2016d) now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, and on the basis of technique and date, the same artist has also been proposed as the creator of the full-length portrait of Kateryn Parr (Figure 2). In Mary's privy accounts, there is another payment in mid-January 1544 noting seven shillings, six pence paid to "John Hayes for drafting a pattern for a cushion for the queen (Kateryn Parr)" (Madden, 1831, p. 150). It is entirely possible that "one John" and "John Hayes" were the same person, a painter who, particularly during the year 1544, was employed by both the princess and the queen and who, in addition to NPG 428 and NPG 4451, may also have been responsible for the original source image of NPG 6804. This identification would confirm the conclusion drawn by the conservators and restorers of NPG 4451 that: "The artist 'John' cannot be formally identified but on the basis of technique is almost certainly a native English painter" (National Portrait Gallery, 2016a).
As noted above, as queen, Kateryn Parr was an enthusiastic patron of portraiture and had early on recognized the political advantage to be gained by publicizing her royal marriage and consequent elevated position through the repeated use of her painted image and its display in public places (James, 2009, pp. 142-151). It was a pattern of visual investment that her stepdaughter, Elizabeth I, was to emulate throughout her own reign. Parr began the trend later copied by Elizabeth of routinely handing out commissioned miniatures of herself like calling cards to friends, family, and political allies. In her household, she employed three female miniaturists-Susanna Horenbout, Lievine Teerlinc, and Margaret Holsewyther-and sat for a gallery of documented portraits by a variety of artists, a collection surprising in its scope for a woman whose years on the throne numbered less than four (James, 1996;James, 2009, pp. 253-54, 279-81, 290-93).
Yet by the end of the century, the identity of the sitter in many of her surviving portraits had been mislabeled or was no longer known. Nor was there, then as now, any authenticated portrait of Jane Grey. Thus for painters and copyists seeking a likeness of Jane to supply an art market animated by debates over both religious heterodoxy and the Suffolk claim (Jane Grey's line) to the Tudor succession during the final years of Elizabeth's reign, the corpus of Kateryn Parr's royal portraiture from the 1540s, loosely drawn from the right time period, provided a convenient pool from which to choose an image. The existence of so many reproductions of variant portraits of this queen labeled "Jane Grey" demonstrates how energetically painters took advantage of that pool

Internal evidence
In addition to the book marked "P____S" in the subject's hand, the internal evidence of costume and jewelry within the portrait supports the hypothesis proposed by this article. As the painting is a late sixteenth-or early seventeenth-century copy, the question arises as to how faithful it is to the original source image. That question can be addressed by examining the two variants of NPG 6804 that still exist, the so-called Norris and Houghton portraits (Edwards, 2015, pp. 44-49, 54-58). Both are of unknown date but fit reasonably well within the same framework of time that produced a majority of the "Jane Grey" paintings, the last years of the reign of Elizabeth I. The Norris portrait has been traditionally identified as Lady Jane Grey and the Houghton portrait as Princess Elizabeth. Yet, a detailed examination of the two by John Stephan Edwards shows that they are not only closely allied variants of NPG 6804 but that the Norris portrait in particular is also iconographically linked to Figure 4, a half-length of Kateryn Parr that is itself of the same approximate date and a copy of an earlier original. A direct comparison of Figure 4 and the Norris portrait "reveals so many similarities that the two portraits must have been based on a single reference image and thus depict the same sitter" (Edwards, 2015, p. 46). The Houghton portrait is a duplicate of NPG 6804. In Edwards' opinion, NPG 6804 and its two variants have the same common reference image and while that image was undoubtedly Parr, all three like the later copies of NPG 4451 were adapted to "become Jane Grey" (Edwards, 2015, p. 52).
While facial likenesses are arguably among the least reliable pieces of evidence on which to base an identification, the subject's face in NPG 6804 is entirely consistent with the six known portrait patterns of the queen. The smoothly parted, light reddish-blond hair, dressed in small flaring fans caught above the side curves of her cap, match the convention used in several of Parr's portraits, as do the thin upper lip, slightly oblique eyes, long nose, and high-arched eyebrows. The coloring of her clothing, too, is consistent with Parr's taste and in the majority of her portraits she is wearing her favorite color, crimson. The color, besides being fashionable, was a "lucky" color believed to have prophylactic qualities able to ensure good health (Boorde, 1870, p. 249;James, 2015, pp. 266-267;Mikhaila & Malcolm-Davies, 2006, pp. 40-41). Kateryn's mother, Maud, believed in such things and owned a number of protective pieces of jewelry set with red jacinths kept for such a purpose (NA: PROB11/24, 1529; James, 1999a, pp. 432-434). As queen, crimson covered Kateryn's close stool and the back of her mirror, provided chamber hangings and collars for her pet spaniel, was worn among her household livery, and, together with purple, was the most frequent color of cloth she received from the silk house at Whitehall (Hayward, 2008, p. 186;James, 1999a, p. 123). "For her first year as queen," notes Maria Hayward, Kateryn "chose to dress in crimson and cloth of gold" (Hayward, 2008, pp. 186-187).
As with NPG 4451, the subject of NPG 6804 wears a cone-shaped farthingale popularized by royal Hapsburg ladies (Arnold, 1988, p. 124). The gown is fashioned from crimson velvet with turned-back sleeves richly embroidered with gold thread and worn over a patterned silk damask or cut velvet forepart. The Venetian-style under-sleeves caught with jeweled clasps matching her girdle are sewn from strips of the same fabric as the forepart, alternating with silk or linen insets embroidered in red thread, matching the lining of the dress collar. Orders for Venetian sleeves can be found among the queen's chamber accounts and the jeweled clasps featured on them were also popular with the queen and were listed as decoration on 22 pairs of sleeves owned by her at her death (Hayward, 2008, pp. 186-187). The pearl embellishments of which Parr was so fond and which form lovers' knots on the forepart of her costume in her full-length portrait have been used in the later work to trim the edges of her gown.
Almost identical in dating, styling, and silhouette is the sitter's costume in Figure 4, discussed above. Here the subject wears an upstanding, fan-shaped collar with embroidered silk or linen lining. The collar emerges from a velvet bodice whose horizontal seam is cut across the bosom. In NPG 6804, this seam is left plain while in Figure 4, a jeweled band has been sewn across it as ornamentation. The pleating on the collar of NPG 6804 is similar to that in yet another late sixteenth-century copy of an original half-length of the queen also in the collection of the NPG (NPG 4618, Figure 5).
In initial NPG press releases regarding the portrait and in the substantial documentation provided by Christopher Foley, the dealer who handled its sale, it was claimed that the dress style in NPG 6804 dates to 1553, the year of Jane Grey's short nine-day reign. A closer examination of the costume challenges this assertion. In addition to the unlikelihood of there being time or interest in having Jane sit to a portrait painter during those brief chaotic days, an analysis of the evolution of both the upstanding fan-shaped collar the subject is wearing, which so nearly matches both Figures 4 and 5, and the configuration of the sitter's French cap, which nearly matches those in Figures 2 and 6, suggests that a far more likely date for this portrait is circa 1544 when Jane Grey was not only far from court but also only 7 or 8 years old. Parenthetically, the argument that children were habitually painted as small adults contributes little to the discussion as no panel portraits of children exist for this period with the exception of the two royal heirs Edward and Elizabeth. And in their portraits, their youth is apparent.
In a miniature attributed to Lucas Horenbout, dated circa 1544 and sometimes suggested as Kateryn Parr [but more probably her first cousin Maud Parr, Lady Lane, (Figure 6)], the collar of the subject's dress is in the same style as NPG 6804 and Figure 4 (Strong, 1984, p. 37, fig. 28). If indeed painted by Horenbout, three of whose female family members were employed by Parr, this miniature must date from before his death in May 1544 (James, 2009, pp. 263-286). An interesting costume detail in the miniature that corresponds precisely with one in NPG 6804 is the small triangular piece of fabric matching the lining of the collar that appears in the lower angle of the collar opening. Possibly a glimpse of the border of the wearer's smock but more likely a separate piece of inserted material as it matches the collar lining, the fashion for this little flash of fabric was of brief duration. Another example of this costume detail can be found in a portrait formerly in the collection of Wrest Park House, again dating to the mid-1540s and again claimed to be of Jane  Grey, but now tentatively identified as an early portrait of Mary Neville, Lady Dacre (1524-76) (Edwards, 2014, pp. 14-20).
These earliest painted examples memorializing the demise of the square-necked bodice that had been in fashion for over three decades and the emerging fashion of the upstanding fanshaped collar, a fashion that was to grow to such extravagant proportions during the reign of Kateryn's stepdaughter Elizabeth, each show this small triangle of cloth filling the bottom angle of the collar. Within a very short time, however, this collar detail was eliminated (see Figures 4 and 5). By 1546, the probable year in which the original images represented by Figures 4 and 5 were painted, the collar is completely open and the fabric tag has vanished. An examination of a secure portrait of Mary I by Antonis Mor from 1554 (Figure 7), painted just months after Jane Grey's death, shows her successor wearing an arrangement of dress common to the early 1550's where the queen's smock, no longer square-necked and open but now sporting an embroidered collar, is pulled up around her throat covering her skin. A small ruff or smock collar, such as Queen Mary wears, and not the bared throat of NPG 6804 was the style at the time Jane Grey sat briefly on the throne in 1553, and even a nine-day queen of England would hardly have been painted wearing a fashion a decade out of date.
Another fashion which places NPG 6804 firmly in the mid-1540s rather than the mid-1550s is the configuration of the subject's cap. When Henry VIII's younger sister, Mary Rose, returned from her brief time as queen of France in 1515, she brought back with her the new fashion for the French cap, smaller, lighter, and far more flattering than the traditional and cumbersome English gable headdress. The ornamentation on the cap was formed by two symmetrical, curving bands of goldsmith's work creating upper and lower habiliments shaped like two parallel arcs, the upper of which was aligned with the nape of the neck and the lower ending in straight points at the chin line (Figure 8). By the 1540s, while the upper band of goldsmith's work still cupped the back of the head, the straight points of the lower band had been shortened and curled to end just in front of the ears near the cheekbone (Figures 1, 2, 6). By the early to mid-1550s, the lower band had generally been discarded and the upper band no longer formed a smooth arc but was reconfigured into a slightly flared, squared U-shape with the tips brought straight down below and behind the ears (Figures 7, 9). These two defining details in the costume worn by the subject of NPG 6804 show small but significant differentiations between the styles of 1544 and 1553 and suggest that the earlier date for the source image of the painting is the more likely one.
Jewelry at the Tudor court was a symbol of wealth and status "obtained by the sheer weight of the gold and the size and quantity of the stones" (Scarisbrick, 1995, p. 75). Such symbolism was certainly the intent of the subject in NPG 6804 when displaying the pieces she has chosen to wear in her portrait. But unlike the jewelry which proved so useful to establishing the queen's identity in NPG 4451, the pieces displayed in NPG 6804 while impressive are not unique enough to provide conclusive proof as to identity of the subject. They are, however, pieces that would have been worn at court and again, in reference to Jane Grey, it would be highly unlikely to find them in the jewel box of a child, even a noble one, living in the countryside in 1544. An inventory still exists for a grab bag of jewelry hastily assembled for Jane on 14 July 1553 from the royal collection housed in the Tower. From that inventory, it would appear that even as queen she never possessed matching jewels of this caliber (Nicolas, 1832, pp. cxxx-cxli). The inventory describes over 133 surprisingly random items that were intended for her use, including books, clocks, rosaries or beads, antique offerings like, "the l're R with a great balez and iij perles pendent'" which probably once belonged to Richard III's wife, Anne, as well as broken bits and pieces like, "a broche of golde with the picture of our Lady of agathe, broken", and pieces of little value like, "a pece of a brasselet cont' vij pec', with counterfet stones" (Nicolas, 1832, pp. cxxxi-cxxxii, cxxxix). Such carelessness in choosing this haphazard hoard reinforces the impression of chaos and confusion at court that operated during those nine days when the armies of Mary were on the march toward London to claim the crown.
More to the point, nothing on this inventory matches the jewels in NPG 6804. The jewels in the portrait do, however, concur with pieces described on Kateryn Parr's jewel lists. There are four jewel lists connected to Parr, the earliest an inventory compiled in 1542 of jewels belonging to Katherine Howard which were given into the hands of Howard's gentlewoman, Anne Parr (Kateryn's sister), after Howard's arrest for treason. The majority of these passed from Henry's fifth queen to his sixth (BL: MS Stowe 559, fos 55-68). A second list, "the Quene's Juelles", is part of a 1550 inventory of Henry's possessions undertaken after his death on the orders of the Lord Protector and Kateryn's brother-in-law, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset (BL: Addit. MS 46,348, fos 167b-171b, 1550). The third list is a slightly earlier variation of the second, and the fourth is a list of the queen's possessions at Sudeley Castle seized by the crown after her death and the arrest of her fourth husband, Thomas Seymour (BL: Addit. MS 46,348 fos 205a-209a, 1550; Society of Antiquaries, MS 129 Pt. A, fos 178a-185b, 1548).
A comparison of NPG 6804 with Figure 4 shows the subjects in both wearing very similar pieces, and despite the fact that these paintings are copies of earlier originals, the copyists appear to have been faithful to their sources as the jewelry agrees with items belonging to Parr. The jeweled habiliment of the cap in NPG 6804 matches Parr's "habiliment containing twenty-seven diamonds only" (BL: Addit. MS 46,348, fol. 171b, 1550). The pearl necklaces in both Figure 4 and NPG 6804 vary slightly but both conform to Kateryn's "lace of the neck containing one hundred pearls only" (BL: Addit. MS 46,348, fol. 170b, 1550). The pendant hanging from it by a red silk thread is also similar to an item on the Parr jewel list, "one ouche or flower containing a fair diamond tabled, holden by antiques with a large pendant pearl", and the diamond and ruby brooch pinned to the bodice of NPG 6804 may be Kateryn's "brooch containing five diamonds and one ruby with pictures in it, one holding in his hands a sallet or headgear" (Addit. MS 46,348, fos 167b, 168b, 1550). A brooch of this sort commonly displayed the gemstones on the front of the jewel and featured a picture or pictures in enamel painted on the reverse. Certainly, the girdle with diamonds set in buttons of gold joined by pearls set in fours is similar to one owned by the queen and described as, "a girdle containing eleven diamonds and twelve clusters of pearls by four in every cluster, having in every cluster a small ruby" (BL: Addit. MS 46,348, fol. 172a, 1550). The repeating pattern of pearl clusters and ruby and diamond buttons in the breast band and girdle of the queen in Figure 4 presents precisely the same fashion in jewelry as NPG 6804.

Conclusion
Lady Jane Grey was born about 1537 which would have made her less than 10 years old when the original source image for NPG 6804, if dated to the mid-1540s, was painted. As mentioned above, panel portraits of children during this period, apart from Princess Elizabeth and Prince Edward, are all but non-existent. Certainly, major commissions such as a three-quarters-length panel portrait for a child, even one of noble birth, do not appear until later in the seventeenth century. There is, therefore, slim likelihood that the child Jane sat for an important portrait during the 1540s into whose historical and artistic context its later manifestation, NPG 6804, fits so comfortably. Henry VIII still ruled. Jane, although in line for the throne, was only fourth in the succession and even further removed should Kateryn Parr present Henry with another heir. Then, too, Jane was not the daughter of a king but of the Marquess of Dorset. During this period, she lived away from the court at her parents' home of Bradgate in Leicestershire. The winter of 1547-1548 she spent with her tutor at Seymour Place in London and the summer of 1548 she spent at Sudeley Castle with her guardian, Sir Thomas Seymour, and his wife, the queen-dowager (James, 1999a, pp. 200-213). At Seymour's death in February 1549, she returned to Bradgate. She was still only 11 years old.
While it is probable that NPG 6804 was intended by the copyist as a portrait of Grey at a time when the succession and her family's place in it were of paramount importance, the portrait pattern selected for the purpose as with so many other paintings claiming to be "Lady Jayne" belonged not to her but to Kateryn Parr. Together with the confluence of internal evidence of costume and jewelry displayed in the program of this painting, the research of White, Skinner, Coles and others suggests what may have been the three-pronged purpose of the original portrait. If that is so, then in this work we can read the painted formulation of Parr's hopes and ambitions. While NPG 4451 celebrates her rise from Yorkshire widow to Queen of England, the original of NPG 6804 informs us of her apotheosis as Regent-General of her husband's kingdom and suggests her support for the nation's military and expansionist pretentions. The book in her hand is the public presentation of her own written work applied in the service of those pretensions and explains both visually through the painting itself and musically through Tallis' setting of the "Ninth Psalm", her commitment to the promotion of England's reformed religion. On multiple levels, then, the portrait becomes a statement of Kateryn Parr's claim to a central place in all of these arenas that she so vigorously championed as queen.
In 1513, Parr's godmother, Catherine of Aragon, had served briefly as her husband's regent during an earlier military excursion into France. But that queen was born the daughter of kings and raised to rule. Her goddaughter came of far less exalted stock and in the summer of 1544 had been queen of England for just a year. No wonder then that Parr was justifiably proud of her achievements in an age when female regents were rare, when women rarely published books and almost never under their own name or dared to produce prayers for men to say when going into battle. "Psalms or Prayers" was not simply a meditation on personal piety from the privacy of a woman's chamber but a bold statement of authority with military overtones and religious and political ramifications meant to be read by the commonweal in churches across the nation. The queen's pause in reading her own work, finger marking the place, suggests to the viewer that they, too, might benefit from an examination of the book. Thus for a Regent-General, who would commission so many portraits meant to reinforce her political and religious agendas, to order this special painting in the summer of 1544 would have been a just and proper way to announce to the court her very real achievements.