This is one of the series of forty-nine portrait miniatures (RCIN 420431-420679) of German and other forebears of the Hanoverian dynasty which were first recorded hanging in Queen Caroline's Closet at Kensington Palace by George Vertue in 1743.

The series can be dated fairly narrowly by internal evidence to the years between 1593-7 and appears to be the work of a single as yet unidentified miniature painter who worked mainly at the Brunswick-Lüneburg court but also visited Brandenburg and other centres. The artist was a naïve successor to the tradition of German court portraiture established by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) at the court of the Elector of Saxony at Wittenberg.

Sophia, daughter of Henry III, Duke of Mecklenburg, married in 1528, Ernest I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. Ernest was the son of Henry, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, whom he succeeded in 1521. His support for the Reformation and introduction of the Protestant religion into his territories ultimately secured the British throne for his Protestant descendant George I.

Inscribed at the top in white: SOPHIA GEBORN HERZO: ZU MECHELBURG UND HERZO: ZU BRAUN : UND LUN.

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