"Haec habeant longos gaudia tanta dies": new discoveries concerning the portrait of the family of William Brooke, 10th Lord Cobham at Longleat House
The purpose of this article is to ask three questions concerning the historically significant and iconographically intricate 1567 portrait of William Brooke, 10th Lord Cobham, and his family, now at Longleat House near Warminster, Wiltshire (Figure 1.) The first question is more complex than it appears. Who are the sitters shown in the portrait? Second, who painted the portrait? Third, what are the messages, both concrete and symbolic, that the painter and the commissioner of the painting have authorized for incorporation in the work? In investigating these questions, this article seeks to examine new, hitherto unpublished material connected with this portrait and to place it in the context of a developing Continental tradition of secular domestic art.