Amongst the Elizabethan era paintings in the Royal Collection one that has attracted considerable speculation is what is often known as the ‘Persian Lady’. The lady herself is obviously western, not Persian, but clad in a voluminous robe in a style identified as being Persian. She is obviously wealthy and also expecting a child. The great question is her identity.
Attempts to answer that have included several distinctly eccentric theories over the years. However the Daily Telegraph recently reported on what appears a much more likely theory that the Subject was Penelope Lady Rich, later Lady Mountjoy and briefly Countess of Devonshire. A very well connected and significant figure at the Elizabethan and Jacobean Court, as the daughter of Lettice Knollys and sister of the ill-fated Earl of Essex, and thus step-daughter of the Earl of Leicester, she was an ultimately scandalous one.
The article about the suggested identification can be seen at Mystery of ‘Persian Lady’ in Elizabethan masterpiece solved
Wikipedia has biographies of Penelope at Penelope_Blount,_Countess_of_Devonshire
and of her two husbands Robert_Rich,_1st_Earl_of_Warwick and at Charles_Blount,_8th_Baron_Mountjoy
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The article on Charles Mountjoy mentions that his marriage to the divorced Penelope was solemnised by his chaplain, William Laud. It does not refer to the fact that for the rest of his life the future Archbishop observed the anniversary by fasting in repentance for conducting the marriage service.
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