Anne, Lady Pope with her children

1 portrait

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Private Collection, c/o Nevill Keating Pictures

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Anne, Lady Pope with her children

by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger
oil on canvas, 1596
80 1/4 in. x 47 7/8 in. (2036 mm x 1217 mm)
Lent by a private collection, courtesy of Nevill Keating Pictures, 2003
Primary Collection
NPG L231

Sittersback to top

  • Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Cleveland (1591-1667), Son of Anne (Hopton), Lady Pope and Henry Wentworth, 3rd Lord Wentworth. Sitter in 1 portrait.
  • Anne (née Hopton), Lady Pope (1561-1625), Former wife of 3rd Baron Wentworth, and later wife of1st Earl of Downe. Sitter in 1 portrait. Identify
  • Henry Wentworth (active 1596), Son of Anne (Hopton), Lady Pope and Henry Wentworth, 3rd Lord Wentworth. Sitter in 1 portrait.
  • Jane Wentworth (active 1596), Daughter of Anne (Hopton), Lady Pope and Henry Wentworth, 3rd Lord Wentworth. Sitter in 1 portrait.

Artistback to top

This portraitback to top

Anne Pope was the daughter of Sir Owen Hopton, Lieutenant of the Tower. She is shown here with her three children, Thomas, Henry and Jane from her first marriage to Henry, 3rd Baron of Wentworth. The year before this portrait was commissioned Anne had married Sir William Pope of Wroxton, later 1st Earl of Downe. At the age of thirty five Anne is also pregnant, presumably with William Pope her first child from this marriage. The portrait was probably commissioned by her new husband and celebrates Anne's fertility and new family connections. As pregnancy was a dangerous period for women, the portrait also served to record her likeness should she die in childbirth. Anne survived and bore a daughter, Anne, and another son, Thomas, later 3rd Earl of Downe.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Bolland, Charlotte, Tudor & Jacobean Portraits, 2018, p. 80 Read entry

    Lady Anne Pope was the daughter of Sir Owen Hopton, Lieutenant of the Tower of London. She married Sir William Pope of Wroxton, later 1st Earl of Downe, in 1595 after the death of her first husband, Henry Wentworth, 3rd Baron Wentworth, in 1593. Sudden illness, differences in age and the risks associated with pregnancy meant that many men and women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries suffered the loss of their spouse, and remarriage after bereavement was common, creating blended families with numerous step-children. Lady Pope is shown during the first pregnancy of her second marriage, accompanied by Thomas, Henry and Jane Wentworth, her three children from her first marriage, in an image that celebrates both her fertility and her new family connections. Thomas and Henry have not yet been breeched but carry a sword, and a bow and arrow to demonstrate their noble status. Thirty years later, Lady Pope's husband commissioned a similar portrait, which was probably displayed alongside this painting at the family home of Wroxton Abbey in Oxfordshire. This later painting depicted his daughter-in-law Elizabeth, accompanied by his grandchildren Thomas and Anne, following the death of his son William, with whom Lady Pope was pregnant in the painting by Gheeraerts (private collection).

Events of 1596back to top

Current affairs

Fears of Spanish invasion of England and Ireland.
An expedition under Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and Charles Howard, Baron Howard of Effingham sacks Cádiz, Spain.
Robert Cecil (later Earl of Salisbury) is made Secretary of State.
Sir Francis Drake dies from fever during an expedition to attack Spanish territories in the New World.

Art and science

The poet and administrator Edmund Spenser publishes the last three books of The Faerie Queene, an epic allegorical poem in praise of Queen Elizabeth I.
The unusual narrative portrait of the soldier and diplomat Henry Unton is commissioned by his widow.
The actor and theatre manager James Burbage builds Blackfriars Theatre, London.

International

Spanish forces capture Calais, France.
The Battle of Keresztes - Mehmed III, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire defeats the combined forces of Sigmund Báthory, Prince of Transylvania and Maximilian, Archduke of Austria.
Sigismund III of Poland transfers the capital of Poland from Kraków to Warsaw.

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