Short answers, pulled from the story.
Levina Teerlinc was a Flemish miniaturist born in Bruges in the 1510s who served as court painter to Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. She was the most important miniaturist at the English court between Hans Holbein the Younger and Nicholas Hilliard, and she held her position for thirty years until her death on the 23rd of June 1576.
Levina Teerlinc received an annual salary of £40, granted by Henry VIII from 1546 until her death in 1576. The Florentine historian Lodovico Guicciardini noted in 1567 that this sum exceeded what had been paid to Hans Holbein the Younger.
Her father was Simon Bening, a renowned miniaturist of the Ghent-Bruges school. He likely trained Levina in manuscript painting, and she may have worked in his workshop before her marriage to George Teerlinc of Blanckenberge in 1545.
Levina Teerlinc did not always sign her miniatures, making attribution difficult. Scholars also believe many works were lost in the fire at Whitehall. A 1983 exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum was the first occasion when a group of miniatures was assembled under her name, totaling five miniatures and two illuminated manuscript sheets.
Court records document her painting portraits of Elizabeth I in the years 1559, 1562, 1563, 1564, 1567, 1568, 1575, and 1576. She also painted a miniature of the Trinity as a New Year gift for Mary I in 1556.
Some scholars speculate that Levina Teerlinc may have trained Nicholas Hilliard in the methods of miniature portraiture. Hilliard, originally a goldsmith, became the defining court miniaturist of the late sixteenth century, and the question of her influence on him remains open to scholarly debate.