Katheryn of Berain (1540/1541–1591) was the daughter of Tudur ap Robert Vychan of Berain, Denbighshire (Clwyd) and the granddaughter of a bastard son of Henry VII. She married four times and through her numerous children and step-children was called Mam Cymru – the mother of Wales. Her first husband John, son and heir of Sir John Salusbury of Llewenni, died in 1556. In 1567 she married Sir Richard Clough, a wealthy merchant from Denbigh and partner of the banker Sir Thomas Gresham, who lived in Antwerp and Hamburg. It is likely this portrait was painted in the Northern Netherlands by the Friesian artist van Cronenburgh. The skull, symbolic of mortality, often occurs in sixteenth-century portraits. Following Clough's death in 1570 she returned to Wales and before 1573 had married Maurice Wynn of Gwydir, who died in 1580.