Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, suo jure 12th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby (née Willoughby; 1519 – 1580). English noblewoman living at the courts of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI and Queen Elizabeth I. She was the fourth wife of Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, who acted as her legal guardian during his third marriage to Henry VIII's sister Mary. Her second husband was Richard Bertie, a member of her household. Following Charles Brandon's death in 1545, it was rumoured that King Henry had considered marrying Katherine as his seventh wife, while he was still married to his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, who was Katherine's close friend.
An outspoken supporter of the English Reformation, she fled abroad to Wesel and later the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the reign of Queen Mary I, to avoid persecution.
Katherine and Richard Bertie's exile became the basis of a ballad by Thomas Deloney (1543–1600), The most Rare and Excellent History, Of the Duchess of Suffolks Calamity, and of Thomas Drue's play, The Life of the Duchess of Suffolk, published in 1624. It may also have been the subject of an unpublished play from 1600 by William Haughton, The English Fugitives. Katherine's second marriage to one of her servants and subsequent persecution also present parallels to the plot of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi.
According to Polish art historian Marcin Latka, this is a portrait of Katherine Brandon by Hans Holbein the Younger (and not a portrait of Catherine Howard).
Miniature by Hans Holbein the Younger
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