Born Princess Elizabeth Stuart of Scotland, the sitter was the eldest daughter of James VI of Scotland, who became King James I of England and his Queen Consort Anne of Denmark, and was the sister of King Charles I. She was christened Elizabeth after her godmother Queen Elizabeth I. She married, in 1613, Frederick V, Elector Palatine whose reign in Bohemia lasted only one winter, prompting her informal title of ‘The Winter Queen’.
The present portrait fits firmly into a small group of miniatures by Isaac Oliver portraying Princess Elizabeth in the years up to her marriage in 1613. The earliest of this group dating to circa 1605 is in the Victoria & Albert Museum (EVANS.7) and shows the sitter as a young girl aged nine or ten in a silvered dress with high-standing white lace ruff and high-piled light brown hair adorned with red rosettes and jewels. A miniature of the sitter in the Royal Collection (RCIN 420031) of circa 1610 showing the sitter a few years later in the same pose and equally adorned with jewels. The present portrait compares closely with both of these works but she appears slightly older, suggesting that it was painted circa 1610/13.
The group of miniatures painted after her marriage continue to depict her in richly adorned dresses and jewellery with red rosettes in her hair, but they fall into a different portrait type (Royal Collection, RCIN 420044), Victoria & Albert Museum (P.152-1910) and another version sold in these rooms from the celebrated James Sotheby Collection, Christie’s, 15 April 1997, lot 30.