Portrait of Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665), half-length, in a yellow and brown jerkin

The sitter was the son of Sir Everard Digby (1578-1606), one of the conspirators executed after the Gunpowder Plot. A royalist and a catholic, Digby was by times a naval commander, a diplomat, an author, a philosopher and a scientist, and one of the most romantic and intriguing figures in seventeeth-century Britain. He married, after a protracted and complicated courtship, the great beauty, Venetia Stanley (1600-1633), daughter of Sir Edward Stanley of Tonge Castle, Shropshire.

The composition of this picture is similar to the portrait, traditionally identified as of Sir Kenelm Digby, at Longleat.