 The attribution to Larkin is supported by later technical analysis comparing these portraits to the documented portrait of Lord Herbert at Charlecote Park, although various hands are identified in the backgrounds of the full-length portraits, indicating that Larkin employed assistants in his workshop or studio to paint these repetitive details, a common practice at the time.Larkin's work marks the last stage in a tradition of English portraiture traceable from the later work of Hans Holbein the Younger through Nicholas Hilliard in which the sitter is painted in flat, lightly modelled fashion, surrounded by meticulously rendered wardrobe and props, with each detail of lace, embroidery, and gilding carefully delineated.Writing in 1960, Sir David Piper said of the paintings now in the Suffolk collection and their ilk "Artistically, they are a dead end, but they have a strange and fascinating splendour."