Portrait of a lady, probably of the Castel Saint Nazare family, three-quarter-length, in a black dress adorned with pearls and diamonds, with a white ruff and black headdress

We are grateful to Emerald Dickson and Evrard van Zuylen at Webaldic for their research into the sitter's coat-of-arms, the sinister half (on the right as seen by the viewer) of which very likely belongs to the Castel Saint Nazare family of France. There is as yet no conclusive identification for the dexter half, thus her husband's identity remains unknown, although there are similarities with the coats for the French town of Dourbies. The historic identification of the sitter as Elizabeth Wriothesley, Countess of Southampton (1572-1655) can be discounted, as neither half bears any resemblance to that of the Wriothesleys, and the Countess would have been thirty-two in 1601, not forty-one as the inscription states.