A portrait drawing of Mary Shelton, later Lady Heveningham (1510/15-1570/71) on pink prepared paper. She was the daughter of Sir John Shelton, and cousin of Anne Boleyn. She is shown half length facing three-quarters to the right and wearing a necklace, pendant and medallion. The drawing has been worked up in coloured chalks, black ink and white heightening. Particuarly noticeable is the extensive black ink used to denote the black velvet of the sitter's headdress, which frames her face. 

An eighteenth-century inscription (a copy of a mid-sixteenth-century original) at top left identifies the sitter as 'The Lady Henegham.'.

Mary Shelton was the daughter of Sir John Shelton. She was part of the lively literary circle that surrounded her cousin Anne Boleyn at court. Among her close acquaintances were Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and she was engaged to Surrey's esquire, Sir Thomas Clere, before Clere's death in 1545. She later married Sir Anthony Heveningham, and it is her married name which is inscribed on this sheet. Shelton was, with Margaret, Lady Douglas, and Mary Fitzroy, Duchess of Richmond and Somerset, a compiler of the Devonshire Manuscript, which brought together poetry by writers including Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt (British Library Add MS 17492).

This drawing has been closely worked in detail and may date from the very end of Holbein's career in England, when Shelton, then in her late 20 or early 30s, was engaged to Clere.