Cultural Depictions of Lady Jane Grey - in Painting

In Painting

In 1833, Paul Delaroche created The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (le Supplice de Jeanne Grey), regarded as the most famous portrait of Jane, which depicts a clandestine execution in a dimly-lit room or dungeon. It is historically inaccurate in most respects and was influenced by the restoration of the French monarchy after the French Revolution. Jane is shown wearing a white garment resembling laced French undergarments, similar in colour to that worn by Marie Antoinette at her execution in 1793. Jane's actual execution took place in the open air of the Tower of London. Two years later, George Whiting Flagg chose to name his representation of a woman being blindfolded Lady Jane Grey Preparing for Execution rather than for Mary, Queen of Scots.

Jane Grey is the only English monarch in the last 500 years for whom no proven contemporary portrait survives. A painting in London's National Portrait Gallery was thought to be Jane for many years, but in 1996 it was confirmed to be of Catherine Parr, Henry VIII's surviving widow with whom Jane lived for a time.

A portrait believed by some experts to be of Jane was discovered in a private home in 2005. Painted 40 to 50 years after Jane's death, the 'Streatham Portrait' (so called for the area of London in which it resided for decades) depicts a young woman dressed in a red gown, adorned with jewels and holding a prayer book. The National Portrait Gallery came under fire after it purchased the painting for a rumoured £100,000 in 2006.

In 2006, Tudor historian David Starkey's interest was piqued by a miniature portrait of a young Tudor woman he found while leafing through a book of Tudor miniatures. Owned by Yale University's Yale Center for British Art, the miniature painting's details convinced Starkey the miniature is a portrait of Lady Jane Grey painted by Levina Teerlinc, Henry VIII's court painter. Other art historians and Tudor experts disagree with his conclusions.