LETTICE KNOLLYS

Lettice Knollys, as countess of Leicester

Born: 8th November 1543

Died: aged 91

Married: Walter Devereux

Robert Dudley

Christopher Blout

Children: Penelope Rich

Dorothy Percy

Robert Devereux

Walter Devereux 

Robert Dudley

Lettice Knollys was an English Noblewoman. She was the daughter of Mary Boleyn, Grandneice of Anne Boleyn and close to Princess Elizabeth since childhood. She married Walter Devereux, the Earl of Essex, when she was 17. She had an affair with Robert Dudley when Devereux went to Ireland in 1573. Lettice married Robert in private, two years later, after Walter died. Queen Elizabeth banished Lettice from court, when she found out about the marriage. The Queen was jealous of Lettice flirting with her favourite Robert Dudley. Lettice and Robert's child Robert died at the age of 3. Lettice died on Christmas day 1634.

Lettice exemplified the Tudor ideal of beauty with her porcelain skin and red-gold hair. The Spanish ambassador de Silva wrote of her in 1565, that she was "one of the best-looking ladies ladies of the court." She was also very fashion-conscious, and soon drew a lot of interest from the courtiers. Queen Elizabeth grew increasingly jealous of the attention paid to her. Not only had Lettice inherited the good looks of the Boleyn girls, she had apparently also inherited "their fascination of manners"

For my final look for Lettice, I found some images that are helping to inspire me. I'm going to look deeply into the colours I am going to use because i want them to help represent her life. As she cheated on her husband, the colours that I would associate with this would be dark browns and blacks. As she was friends with the Queen, the colours that associate with this are golds and whites. I found some images of what my final outcome may look like below:

Hair Style

I was thinking of having my hair half up like an Elizabethan and then tied back into a braid. Another idea I had was to raise the hair at the front into a quiff, then at the back, the quiff could be tied into a donut bun. The rest of the hair could be curled and covered in pearls, ribbon and lace.

I found some inspirational pictures below.

FACE CHARTS

Monochromatic look:

My first idea is to use a colour scheme. I have thought about using just one colour to represent Lettice  Knollys personality. The colours I would potentially use include dark colours like purples, blacks and greys or reds. The face chart above is from my monochromatic look. The eyebrows could be spiked up, messy and coloured in. I want to include glitter on the eyes which could represent wealth. I won't necessarily use purple in my look because it doesn't fit in with the whole Elizabethan idea, as you never really see purple in their portraits. So instead I'm thinking of using gold.