Portrait of Queen Catherine of Braganza as Saint Catherine, full-length, holding a palm frond in her right hand, her left hand resting on a lamb with a putto strewing flowers

Catherine of Braganza (1638-1705) was the daughter of John IV of Portugal and of Louisa de Gusman, daughter of the Duke of Medina Sidonia. After the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, whereby Portugal was abandoned by France, her marriage to Charles II in May 1662 sealed a much needed alliance with England. The marriage was not easy as Charles had numerous mistresses and she was unable to bear an heir, resulting in many plots against her to procure a divorce. After Charles's death in 1685 she remained in England until 1692 when religious differences with William and Mary forced her to return to Lisbon. She died there in 1705. In this painting she is depicted as her patron saint with a putto strewing flowers on a lamb, which may be an allusion to one of the Queen's unhappy pregnancies. There are autograph versions in the Royal Collection at Windsor and St. James's Palace. (see O. Millar, Catalogue of Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen - The Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures, London, 1963, I, no. 289, 290, p.131.)