Following an investigation by the College of Arms it appears that this portrait may be of a member of the ducal house of Württemberg. Certainly the complex armorial crest and the motto ‘Tout avec dieu’ belong to that family. The cavalry skirmish in the background undoubtedly refers to the military career of the sitter. This form of portrait is not unusual in the seventeenth century, a time of civil unrest in many parts of Europe. Anthony van Dyck’s formal figure compositions of royalty and the nobility set a model for such high status images produced by many later seventeenth-century artists such as Godfrey Kneller, Peter Lely and others, in Britain, the Low Countries and German princedoms. How or why this portrait came to North Wales is unknown; so too is the name of the artist who painted this confident duke in his gilded armour.