In 1909
Sir Lionel Cust identified the portrait which had been in the possession of the
Cromwell family for centuries as
Catherine Howard. Cust's identification stood unchallenged until doubts were raised about the sitter's identity in the catalogue of The Kings and Queens of England exhibition held at Liverpool in 1953. A further attempt to identify the lady as Queen Catherine Howard was made by
Bendor Grosvenor,
David Starkey and Alasdair Hawkyard in the Lost faces exhibition catalogue in 2007. In the 1960s
Sir Roy Strong, following the lead of
Charles Kingsley Adams, noted that both the Toledo portrait and the National Portrait Gallery version appear in the context of a series of portraits of members of the family of the
Protector's uncle,
Sir Oliver Cromwell, and have provenances linking them with the
Cromwell family. He argued that the portrait in the
Toledo Museum of Art should by rights depict a lady with strong ties to the Cromwell family who was 21 in around 1535 to 1540. He stated that a dated parallel for costume (a short-lived style), notably the distinctive cut of the sleeves, is Holbein's
Christina of Denmark of 1538. John Rowlands agreed that stylistically the portrait belonged to the period c. 1535–40, but considered that the French Hood "suggests a date towards its end." In
Thomas Cromwell's family Strong identified two women who might have been around the right age to be the sitter: Frances Murfyn (c. 1520 – c. 1543), the wife of
Sir Richard Cromwell, and a lady of the highest social standing:
Elizabeth Seymour (c. 1518 – 1568), who married, successively,
Sir Anthony Ughtred (d
. 1534),
Gregory Cromwell, 1st Baron Cromwell (c. 1520 – 1551) and
John Paulet, 2nd Marquess of Winchester (c. 1510 – 1576). Elizabeth was the daughter of
Sir John Seymour of
Wulfhall in
Wiltshire and
Margery Wentworth. She was a younger sister of
Edward and
Queen Jane as well as aunt to the future
Edward VI. On 3 August 1537, when she was about nineteen or twenty, Elizabeth, Lady Ughtred, married Thomas Cromwell's 17-year-old son, Gregory, with whom she would have three sons and two daughters. She served in the household of
Anne Boleyn,
Anne of Cleves and
Catherine Howard. He suggested that Elizabeth Seymour might be the subject of the painting.
Antonia Fraser argued that the sitter is Jane Seymour's sister, Elizabeth, the widow of
Sir Anthony Ughtred (d. 1534), on the grounds that the lady bears a resemblance to Jane, especially around the nose and chin, and wears widow's black. Derek Wilson observed that "in August 1537 Cromwell succeeded in marrying his son, Gregory, to Elizabeth Seymour", the queen's younger sister. He was therefore related by marriage to the king, "an event worth recording for posterity, by a portrait of his daughter-in-law".
Heraldry Cromwell's biographer,
Diarmaid MacCulloch compared the
heraldic achievement of Thomas Cromwell of 1537 with that of Edward Seymour (
augmented the year before) and noticed striking similarities. Cromwell was granted a
coat of augmentation following the marriage of his son to the queen's sister in August 1537; the second and third quarters have a division of six, with
fleurs-de-lis alternating with
pelicans and possess "the same unusual threefold structure, same metal and colours, fleurs de lys, and a feral creature" as the
coat of augmentation granted to
Edward Seymour when he was made
Viscount Beauchamp, following his sister, Jane's, marriage to the king:
Or, on a pile gules between six fleurs-de-lys azure three lions of England. File:Coat of arms of Edward Seymour Viscount Beauchamp.png|Coat of arms of
Edward Seymour,
Viscount Beauchamp File:Coat of arms of Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, KG, stained glass, Bodleian Library Oxford.png|Coat of arms of
Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, KG, 16th-century
stained glass,
Bodleian Library, Oxford File:Thomas Cromwell medal, 1538 side 2.png|Medal with bust of Thomas Cromwell. Reverse: Armorial shield of Cromwell, being two coats quarterly, within the Garter, 1538.
British Museum Symbolism In the Toledo portrait Holbein provides visual puns and heraldic clues to identify the sitter: firstly, an angel, a
heavenly being depicted with birds' wings. The
angel in the sitter's pendant jewel represents the arms of
Sir John Seymour (a pair of golden wings):
''Gules, a pair of "angels' wynges" conjoined in lure Or''. The
angel was also an English gold coin patterned after the French angelot or ange. The name derived from its representation of the
Archangel Michael slaying a
dragon. It has been suggested that the coin may have been the inspiration for the portrait. The golden vines (a Biblical motif) on her wing-like sleeves, symbolising abundance and wealth (''manche: ailes de vignes d'or'') encircle the angels' wings in her pendant jewel (''ange: ailes divines d'or''). The six
fleurs-de-lis on her left sleeve represent those in the Seymour augmentation and that of Cromwell. In the Cromwell arms "the pelican carried an evangelical message, yet it could also echo the main motif of the original Seymour family coat, birds' wings conjoined." It is clear that this 21-year-old lady has close ties to both the
Seymour and the
Cromwell families: the angels and the fleurs-de-lis symbolise a Seymour-Cromwell marital alliance. "There can be little doubt that this Holbein masterpiece, the original in
Toledo, depicts Elizabeth Seymour". File:COA_of_Seymour.svg|Arms of
Sir John Seymour: ''Gules, a pair of "angels' wynges" conjoined in lure Or'' File:Marriage augmentation arms of Queen Jane Seymour.svg|Seymour: coat of augmentation, 1536 File:Henry VIII Angel 2.jpg|Henry VIII angel, struck 1513–1526. Obverse: The
Archangel Michael slaying a
dragon. Reverse: A ship surmounted by a shield bearing the King's arms
Franny Moyle observed that "One of the most striking portraits of a woman Holbein ever delivered was of Cromwell's daughter-in-law, painted probably in 1539 as she turned twenty-one." ==Provenance==