The sitter was the only son of Sir Anthony Browne, standard-bearer of England and constable of Calais, and his wife Lucy Nevill, daughter and coheiress of John, Marquis of Montacute, and niece of Richard, Earl of Warwick "the Kingmaker". Browne was a close member of the Royal Court and acted as an attendant to King Henry VIII from 1524 until the Monarch's death. Throughout his career as a diplomat and politician he acted as ambassador and envoy. He represented his King at Nice during the divorce from Catherine of Aragan; in 1540 he was sent to the court of John of Cleves to act as proxy at the marriage of the King to Anne of Cleves . With the death of the King in 1547 Browne was appointed an executor and guardian to Prince Edward (later Edward VI) and Princess Elizabeth. During the Dissolution of Monateries in the late 1530s he was granted vast amounts of land especially in Sussex and Kent, including Battle Abbey and a considerable part of Hastings; from his cousin the Earl of Southampton he inherited Cowdray House, also in Sussex, which had already been built by Southampton but was subsequently enlarged by Browne. He married twice: firstly Alys, daughter of Sir John Gage K.G., by whom he had Sir Anthony (1526-1693) 1st Viscount Montague, heir to the estates. Secondly he married Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, daughter of Gerald 9th Earl of Kildare, and known as 'the fair Geraldine', she being fifteen years of age, he being sixty. Their two children died in infancy and she remarried Edward Clinton, 1st Earl of Lincoln.

There are two other versions of the present picture but with slight differences; in the National Portrait Gallery and Paget Collection St. Donat's Castle. Both picturse show Browne wearing the Garter Collar, and with a greater amount of inscription. Harding and Stow engraved one of the versions showing the Garter Collar, but without the tablet and inscriptions.