File:Jane Grey engraving van der Passe with caption.gif

English: Engraving of a lady called Lady Jane Grey (1537–1554) by Willem van de Passe and Magdalena van de Passe, c.1620, after an earlier painting. The identity of the sitter in the NPG portrait was later challenged, however, resulting in a consequent questioning of the identity of the lady in the van de Passe engraving. Susan James determined in 1996 that the lady in the painting is almost certainly Katherine Parr, last wife of Henry VIII. She did so by correlating the seemingly unique coronet-shaped brooch with an almost identical item described in an inventory of royal jewels from about 1550. If James is correct and the brooch design is indeed as unusual as she suggests, the sitter in the van de Passe engraving is most likely Catherine Parr. James further argued that the brooch is 'most unlikely to have passed through the hands of Jane Grey’, thereby explicitly eliminating Jane as the sitter. In addition to the inventory of 1550, James cites a second inventory of royal jewels dated 1587 that lists a brooch ‘with a Crown garnished with xv small diamonds and in the midst of the [brooch] is a ruby with two diamonds and one Emerald, and the three pearls pendant'. The records of the royal wardrobe for the later reign of James I indicate that the brooch was subsequently broken up and the gold melted down in 1609. From the various inventories spanning almost sixty years, James concludes that the brooch is unlikely ever to have been out of the possession of the immediate royal family.