Editing Lady Margaret Beaufort (section)

==Portraits==
[[File:Lady Margaret Beaufort from NPG.jpg|right|thumb|upright=1.2|Anonymous 17th-century portrait of Margaret in widow's garb]]
There is no surviving portrait of Margaret Beaufort dating from her lifetime. All known portraits, however, are in essentially the same format, depicting her in her later years, wearing a long, peaked, white headdress and in a pose of religious contemplation. Most of these were made in the reign of Henry VIII and [[Elizabeth I]] as symbols of loyalty to the Tudor regime. They may be based on a lost original, or be derived from the sculpture on her tomb in [[Westminster Abbey]], in which she wears the same headdress.<ref>Strong, Roy (1969), ''Tudor & Jacobean Portraits'', [[The National Portrait Gallery, London]], p. 20.</ref>

One portrait by [[Meynnart Wewyck]] in 1510 shows her at prayer in her richly furnished private closet behind her chamber. The plain desk at which she kneels is draped with a richly patterned textile that is so densely encrusted with embroidery that its corners stand away stiffly. Her lavishly [[illuminated manuscript|illuminated]] [[Book of Hours]] is open before her, with its protective cloth wrapper (called a "chemise" binding), spread out around it. The walls are patterned with oak leaf designs, perhaps in lozenges, perhaps of stamped and part-gilded leather. Against the wall hangs the dosser of her canopy of estate, with the tester above her head (the Tudor rose at its centre) supported on cords from the ceiling. The coats-of-arms woven into the tapestry are of England (parted as usual with France) and the portcullis badge of the Beauforts, which the early Tudor kings later used in their arms. Small [[stained-glass]] roundels in the leaded glass of her lancet windows also display elements of the arms of both England (cropped away here) and Beaufort.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sJ5AAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA206 |title=The Burlington Magazine |publisher=Burlington Magazine Publications Limited |date=1908 |page=206}}</ref> The painting, which measures 180&nbsp;cm by 122&nbsp;cm, is notable as the first large-scale portrait of an Englishwoman.<ref>Chen, Andrew, and Charlotte Bolland. "Meynnart Wewyck and the Portrait of Lady Margaret Beaufort in the Master's Lodge at St John's College, Cambridge", ''The Burlington Magazine'' 161 (April 2019): 314–319.</ref>

In 2023, restoration work on the Wewyck portrait revealed that it had been overpainted several times throughout its history, with Margaret's original facial expression made more sombre and pious.<ref>St. John's College, Cambridge, ''Painting of Lady Margaret Beaufort smuggled to Cambridge to protect it from King Henry VIII's henchmen unveiled'', https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/painting-lady-margaret-beaufort-smuggled-cambridge-protect-it-king-henry-viiis-henchmen-unveiled.</ref>