Frederick II (1720-85) is wearing Hussar uniform with the ribbons and stars of the Orders of the Garter and the Black Eagle. He also has the seal of the Golden Fleece and the cross of the Military Order of Merit of Hesse-Cassel on a blue and white ribbon.

Frederick was awarded the Order of the Garter in 1741 and provided military support for George II in 1745 against the Jacobite uprising in Scotland and to his nephew, George III, in the American War of Independence. His first wife, whom he married in 1740, was Princess Mary, the daughter of George II and Queen Caroline. The marriage was unhappy and Horace Walpole, art historian and writer, referred to Frederick as a boor and a brute. They had four sons, the eldest of whom died in infancy, and separated in 1755 after Frederick's conversion to Catholicism became public. After Mary died in 1772, Frederick married Princess Philippina of Brandenburg-Schwedt. Frederick succeeded his father, William VIII, in 1760, as Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel.

The miniature is based on a full-length portrait of Frederick by Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder, dated 1778 and now in the Schloss Fasanerie, Germany. A similar miniature is worn in a bracelet in Tischbein's portrait of Philippina, also in Schloss Fasanerie.

Inscribed on the back in ink: Frederick / Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel.