In this portrait of Sir Robert Dudley, illegitimate son of the Earl of Leicester and Baroness Sheffield, Hilliard highlights the social standing of his model in the composition and the many accessories. An interesting detail is the locket on Dudley’s left shoulder, probably containing a miniature of his father or the queen. Dudley was an explorer and cartographer. He moved to Italy and converted to Catholicism after he failed to claim his father’s peerage.