Caroline of Ansbach married George Augustus, the Electoral Prince of Hanover, the future George II, in 1705. She was seen as a protestant heroine in Britain as she had earlier turned down marriage to the Holy Roman Emperor because she could not bring herself to convert to Catholicism. When he met her, George was immediately struck with her 'good character' and 'would not think of anybody else after her' according to the British envoy at the time. When her father-in-law was proclaimed King of Britain, the whole family moved to England but she had to leave behind her seven-year-old son, Frederick, as the representative of the dynasty in Hanover. There seems to have been genuine affection between Caroline and George and one contemporary commentator noted that her 'power was unrivalled and unbounded' and that 'she directed everything … either at home or abroad'. When she died in 1734 George was distraught.

Caroline loved the company of poets, philosophers, musicians and artists as much as her husband disliked it. It was she who discovered the collection of sketches by Hans Holbein in the Royal Collection in an old bureau. In 1743 she commissioned George Vertue, the engraver and antiquary, to compile the first catalogue of miniatures in the Royal Collection. Vertue described how he spent 'near four months for two or three days a week drawing & Coppying … I have made an exact and entire Catalogue not only of those pictures done by Holben but also all other pictures limning paintings small & large, with the Carvings in Ivory, & Miniatures Enamels &c. in frames Cases &c in the Closet'.

This enamel by Christian Frederick Zincke derives from a miniature (Royal Collection; RCIN 420653) by the Swedish artist Christian Richter (1678-1732), Richter's miniature was in turn based on the full-length oil portrait by Kneller of Queen Caroline, dating from 1716 (Royal Collection, RCIN 405313). The reverse of the miniature may possibly be inscribed but the original eighteenth-century locket in which the miniature is housed is sealed and unopened.