Lady Elizabeth Pope
- Artist: attributed to Robert Peake
- Date: c.1615
- Medium: Oil paint on wood
- Dimensions: support: 775 x 610 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
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About this artwork
This is the “Lady Elizabeth Pope” by the early‑17th‑century painter Robert Peake. It was painted around 1615, likely to celebrate Elizabeth Watson’s marriage to Sir William Pope that December. The portrait shows her beneath a laurel tree, with a simple landscape beyond. She wears a black mantle embroidered with pearls in an ostrich‑feather pattern, and a hat trimmed with a real purple feather – both motifs hinting at her father’s investments in the Virginia Company. Around her neck, a heavy diamond necklace drapes over a pearl choker, while a coral bracelet graces her left wrist and strings of pearls trail from her right hand.
Peake’s style is unmistakably linear and shadowless, a technique he honed during his time as Serjeant Painter to the monarchs of the era. The sitter’s long hair, loose except for a single braid, signals virginity and was a fashionable symbol among Jacobean brides. Notice the near‑exposure of her left breast – a bold fashion reserved for the elite court circle. The portrait was once part of the Wroxton Abbey family collection and was purchased in 1955, preserving a vivid snapshot of early‑modern English portraiture and its intertwined social, political, and symbolic threads.
See it in person
Lady Elizabeth Pope is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
