This is one of a group of eight miniatures (420423-420430) which form a retrospective extension to the series of forty-nine miniatures of rulers of Brunswick-Lüneburg and their wives (420431-420679) dating from c. 1595 also in the Royal Collection.

This secondary group of eight miniatures consists of fanciful portraits of fifteenth century Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg and their consorts. They are embellished with inscriptions in Gothic script indicating a romantic view of the historic past and are later in date than the larger, original group. The set has previously been thought to date from the seventeenth century when the production of ancestral portrait sets in oil was common. However, the impetus to enlarge the original group of 49 miniatures may well have come when they were hung prominently in Queen Caroline’s Closet at Kensington Palace in the mid–1730s. It is conceivable that the eight additional miniatures were produced on the instructions of Queen Caroline by an English miniaturist capable of emulating the naïve sixteenth-century style of the Brunswick-Lüneburg Court Miniaturist.

Magdalena, daughter of Frederick I, Elector of Brandenburg, married, in 1429, Frederick I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg.

Inscribed at the top in white: magdalena marggraff fridrichen Des ersten Churfursten zu brandenburg tochter.

Text adapted from The First Georgians: Art and Monarchy 1714-1760, London, 2014.