What did LADY JANE GREY look like? | The nine day Queen | Streatham portrait | Lady Jane Grey’s face

hi history lovers and welcome or welcome back to the channel where i bring you new videos every friday on all aspects of the past today on history calling we're asking what did lady jane grey look like she was arguably the first queen of england depending on whether or not you choose to recognize her in but after her family's field attempt to put her and keep her on the throne in 1553 instead of mary the first gian was ultimately executed in february 1554 becoming one of the tudor's greatest tragedies in this video we'll take a quick look at her life explain why most images of her can be discounted as true likenesses how we know the one supposedly contemporary description of her is fraudulent and most importantly of all why the so-called stratum portrait now held in the national portrait gallery in london is believed by many to be her and by many others including historian david starkey to be a red herring i'll explain this painting's known history why the sitter's clothing and jewelry are important what science can tell us about the age of the portrait and what that faded golden inscription above her shoulder says stay till the end to hear whether i think it really is gin [Music] [Music] before we start please remember to subscribe to the channel with notifications switched on so you never miss an upload give this video a like and share it with your friends you can also follow me on instagram where my username is history calling there's a link for this in the description box below and i'll also leave links there for some books about gian grey's life if you'd like to learn more about her lady jane gray was born in either 1536 or 1537 and was the eldest of three surviving children all girls of francis brandon and henry gray marquis of dorset leader jake of suffolk on her mother's side she was the granddaughter of charles brandon also duke of suffolk and princess mary tudor dodger queen of france and younger sister of henry viii this gave jean a real but seemingly quite distant claim to the english throne as king henry decreed that should his own three surviving children mary elizabeth and edward all die without issue the throne was to go to the descendants of his sister mary in other words frances brandon and her children the old king died in january 1547 and was succeeded by his nine-year-old son prince edward this event led to a great change in jane's life too as she went to live with henry's widow queen catherine parr and her new husband thomas seymour who was also edward's maternal uncle and who planned for a time to marry jane off to the boy king nothing came of this but if you'd like to learn all about edward's life i have a video on him which i'll leave linked on screen and in the description box catherine died of childbirth complications in september 1548 and thomas was sent to the block the following march for attempting to seize control of the king jean then returned here to her parents home at bradgate house four years later on the 21st of may 1553 she was married to lord gilford dudley son of the duke of northumberland within weeks of the marriage however jain's whole world would fall apart the 15 year old ardently protestant king edward was by now dying and he decided he was unhappy with his father's arrangements for the succession for he didn't want the crown to go to his catholic half-sister mary or his apparently illegitimate half-sister elizabeth in fact he wasn't crazy about the idea of a female ruler at all instead he drafted a new document his device for the succession which skipped over his sisters and francis brandon and initially left the crown to jain's sons when it became clear that he would die before she could produce a boy he altered his device and left the crown first to her then to her male heirs the king died on the 6th of july and despite her reluctance jane's father and father-in-law made a serious attempt to put her on the throne in place of mary installing her in the tower of london and proclaiming her queen it didn't work mary gathered an army and took the throne back gian whose reign had lasted just nine days never left the tar again and when an uprising against mary in which henry greyjuke of suffolk unwisely took part field in early 1554 the queen had gian her husband gilford and suffolk executed after her death on the 12th of february lady jane was buried beneath the floor of the chapel of saint peter advancola in the tower of london close to two other tragic tudor queens anne boleyn and catherine howard if you're interested in any of these events see my videos on the life of mary the first part 3 and on the executions of anne and catherine they're all linked below we now come to the issue of jane's appearance it used to be thought that we had a detailed description of her from someone who had seen her in life this was apparently written by a genoese merchant sir baptista spinola who witnessed her entering the tar in july 1553 it says that she was very short and thin but prettily shaped and graceful she has small features and a well-shaped nose the mouth flexible and the lips red the eyebrows are arched and darker than her hair which is nearly red the eyes are sparkling and reddish brown in color i stood so near her grace that i noticed her colour was good but freckled when she smiled she showed her teeth which are white and sharp as interesting as this description is unfortunately it's now believed to be a feak it first appears in a book published in 1909 and written by richard davey and when she went looking for the original document in the genoese archives where it was supposedly located historian leander delisle was unable to find it concluding that devi had invented the account using some real details from sources describing that day and others which made passing remarks about gene she writes that baptista spinula is a fiction inspired in part by a real merchant called benedict spinola who was the basis for the character baptiste espanola in shakespeare's taming of the shrew and whom devi further confuses with a soldier called baptista spanola devi is a fraudster of the type who faked the hitler diaries giving people what they wanted where history did not supply it if you'd like to read delilah's book again there's a link in the description box there are many supposed images of this teenage queen including the ones you see here but there is no confirmed portrait of this key figure in english history some images such as this one of catherine parr were initially thought to be gene but were later re-identified others like this 19th century painting of her execution by the artist paul de la roche are later imaginings of her looks and of how the events of her life and death unfolded the lack of a surviving contemporary portrait is no doubt due to her youth when she died under the amount of time which has passed since which has allowed what portraits there were to become lost or destroyed indeed some may have been deliberately destroyed in view of the fact that she died in such disgrace as you may already know if you've seen my video on digging up ann berlin she and some of the other execution victims buried in the chapel of saint peter and vincula were temporarily disinterred in the 1870s but jean's bones were not amongst those excavated and so her remains could not be used to establish any details of her appearance it seemed as though historians would therefore be left to wonder whether portraits of her immediate family might offer some likeness of jian but with no way to know for sure what she looked like as of the early 21st century however an answer to this gap in our knowledge of lady gian may finally have been provided in 2006 the national portrait gallery in london splashed out a reported one hundred thousand pounds to buy this supposed portrait of larry jean called the stratum portrait because it was purchased from a man living in the stratum area of the city it was lambasted by historian david starkey as an appallingly bad picture and he added there's absolutely no reason to suppose it's got anything to do with lily g and gray as it stands however this is currently the only picture with a serious claim to bgn so let's look at why the gallery was convinced enough that it was her to lay out so much money on it and why starkey among others is convinced that it isn't jane npg-6804 to give it its official designation is described on the gallery's website as being an oil on oak panel painting it's 33 and 3 4 inches tall by 23 and 3 4 inches wide the stratum cellar reported that it had been inherited by him from his great-grandfather and his family have been trying to get the gallery to authenticate it as a portrait of jean since 1923 there are a number of reasons to think that it's her starting with the sitter's clothing and accessories the young woman depicted here is wearing a french hood and a deep red or brown dress with a high but open neckline which is consistent with the styles of the 1550s compare this portrait to one of the young elizabeth the first painted in around 1545 or 46 for instance and you see elizabeth wearing a hood which is broadly similar but with a dress in an earlier style with an open square neckline elizabeth is also holding a book in her hands with another open on a lectern behind her suggesting the exceptional academic gifts she was known to have and her studious nature both qualities which jean shared if we come back to the stratum portrait we see that its sitter also has a black bind book in one hand as well as suggesting a scholarly young woman this is also one indication beyond the fact that she was having her portrait painted at all that she came from a wealthy family as books were expensive objects in this period the painting suggests more than wealth though it suggests extreme wealth the kind that royalty and precious few others had in the 1550s this is signified by the countless precious stones set in gold the sitter's dress and hood are studded with and her elaborate jewelry she can absolutely hold her own against the dress hood necklace and brooch we see elizabeth tudor wearing in the mid-1540s and elizabeth was the daughter of the king the embroidery on the sleeves and inside the neckline are further indications that this young woman had serious money behind her as they all had to be done by hand and made dresses like this much more expensive than those of plain fabric would have been as interesting as what she is wearing is what she is not wearing is also important we can see the bottoms of all the fingers on her left hand and she has no wedding band suggesting a young girl in her teens or early twenties all of these details fit with the known facts of jean's life in the early 1550s still you might wonder why have historians latched on to jane grey to be the anonymous sitter over all the other wealthy unmarried women in the land at this time the answer is the painting's inscription located above her right shoulder in faded gold lettering are the words lydie jane i know you can't see the whole inscription clearly here but it's been professionally checked and so we know that that's what it says this dramatically limits the number of potential candidates the sitter could be for there were comparatively few women living in the 1550s of sufficiently high rank to be known as lady gian before they were even married and was the kind of money necessary to own a dress like this furthermore christopher foley who was the art dealer working for the stratham family at the time of the 2006 seal to the national portrait gallery stated that we checked every gene in the english aristocracy in the 16th century and there was no one else it could reasonably be the inscription and the date of the portrait were and for some no doubt still are points of concern however for although it shows a woman of the 1550s it wasn't painted in that decade dendrochronology tests which essentially date wood have instead established that the panel on which it's painted comes from a tree cut down in around 1593 half a century after gian's death there was also a question mark over whether the inscription was painted at the same time as the rest of the image however tests on the paint established that the gold used in the lettering is contemporaneous with the rest of the portrait and that the paint was obsolete by 1700 further confirming that the portrait belonged to the late 16th or 17th centuries whoever the sitter is then we would appear to be looking at a copy of a lost original if it's not lily jane grey though what other lady jean had a sufficiently high profile that someone would be prepared to pay for a portrait of her to be made 50 years later no convincing answer has been put forward and we are left with the likelihood that this is indeed a copy of an earlier painting of jin possibly created in the late elizabethan or early stewart era as part of a set of images showing protestant murders as jane was by then viewed due to the nature of her death this idea is given further credence by the fact that the painting has been attacked at some point in its history and the eyes and mouth scratched at perhaps in an instance of religious bigotry david starkey has complained that the portrait has no paper trail to take it back to its original owner that it is too low quality to be a portrait of royalty and that no jewelry inventories of items belonging to jain or heraldry depicted within the image support the idea that it's her to this those involved in its identification and sale to the npg have responded that things like heraldry evidence rarely exist and not all portraits need to be of high quality to be authentic attempts at a likeness of the subject one even questioned if starkey didn't want to believe that it is jian because he didn't find the portrait himself admittedly when compared to the work of famous court painters such as hans holbein it lacks realism and even looks a little cartoonish but not all painters had whole band's skill and the fact that it is a copy with no live subject to base it on helps to explain its low quality as a piece of art in the end having read as much as i could about the painting and in the absence of any additional evidence the only person i would bet on the stratum portrait being is lady jane grey i simply can't see that there was any other very wealthy unmarried lady jean in the 1550s with a profile high enough to warrant creating a fresh portrait of her 50 years later i would like to have a history of its provenance but sadly we can't have everything what do you think though do you believe that it is lady jane let me know in the comments below and don't forget to subscribe to the channel with notifications switched on and give the video a like if you enjoyed it you may also like my video on what queen catherine howard looked like which examines a number of supposed paintings of henry viii's fifth wife or perhaps one of the other videos i mentioned earlier and which you can see in the end cards here whatever you choose please enjoy and until next time keep learning

Channel: History Calling

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Keywords: what did lady jane grey look like, is this lady jane grey, the fall of lady jane grey, lady jane grey's face, lady jane grey's appearance, the life of lady jane grey, The pretender queen, the first queen of England, the nine day queen, how lady jane grey became queen, Portrait of Lady Jane Grey, Streatham portrait, History Calling, is the Streatham portrait lady jane grey, Lady Jane Gray, Frances Brandon, Lady Katherine Grey, Henry Grey Duke of Suffolk, Guildford Dudley

Id: 66YkitHniAc

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 26 2021