Well, that was fast

I woke up this morning to an email from a pictures library assistant at the Royal Collection with a nice high resolution picture of the portrait attached.  I can't publish it, but it gives me something else to stare at. It also just makes me so darn happy about how easy researching has become. Even when I was in school, a response like this would be unheard of, and now it is an everyday occurrence.  Ain't technology grand?

Also, in further news regarding the embroidery reference, I found this rather grumpy siren published in several modelbooks close to my target date.  The portrait is dated 1531, and the woodcut is published in Niccolo Zoppino's Ensamplario di Lavori published in 1530 and in Giovanni Tagliente's Ensamplario Nuovo daed 1531. It's found in several other later books, but those are both right at the correct date, so I'll take it. If you want to have a look at either Zoppino or Tagliente, Kathryn Goodwyn has both as pdf's on Flowers of the Needle.  The blackwork patterns in the same collections are of the stairstep type, however, so I'm still a little muddy on what I'm doing. Not that I can't use them, but I might need to do them polychrome, or just possibly in mixed stitches.  Still thinking on that.