This is one of the five earliest paintings surviving in the Royal Collection. The others are Henry V, Edward IV, Richard III and Elizabeth Woodville. Recent dendrochronological (tree-ring) analysis indicates that this panel was painted between 1504 and 1520. It would have been part of a set of heads of kings and queens either commissioned by Henry VII or Henry VIII.

Henry VI is shown in a head-and-shoulders view against a patterned background. He wears the collar of the Lancastrian order of SS from which hangs a jewelled pendant. The rings on his hands probably have royal significance.

Originally the hat was taller and narrower, but was lowered, probably at the time of painting, to conform to a more typical sixteenth-century style. This may indicate that the early sixteenth-century artist was following an existing pattern, possibly in the form of a drawing made from life. Other later versions, such as that in the National Portrait Gallery, follow this lower form of the hat. The flesh on the face is heavily overpainted, but traces of the original underdrawing can be discerned by the naked eye.

The artist is unidentified but would probably have been either British or Flemish, working for the royal court. The painted spandrels at the corners of the painting contain the arms of France and England. Originally the painting would have been in a gilded, engaged frame which has been dismantled at some point in the painting’s history. It is now displayed in a twentieth-century reproduction Tudor frame.

The painting appears in Pyne's illustrated 'Royal Residences' of 1819, hanging in The Old Drawing Room at Kensington Palace (RCIN 922153).