Is this the face of Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII and mother of Elizabeth I? Drawn
by famed court painter Hans Holbein the younger, this woman has been labelled as Anne, yet debate
rages as to whether this is really her, or a case of mistaken identity. Join me for today’s
video from History Calling as we look at the provenance of this drawing, the question of who
identified it as this famous Tudor Queen and the problems with that identification. These include
the very unexpected images drawn on the back of the original page (which hardly anyone ever seems
to pay attention to) and the differences between this and other images and descriptions of Anne.
The drawing shows a woman almost in profile, her head turned so that the left side of her
face is towards us, though we do get a peak at her right eye. She appears to be neither a child,
nor a middle aged or older woman, but such is the nature of drawings such as these that she
could conceivably be anywhere from the ages of 20 to 40. I’ll be discussing the picture’s provenance
in full in a few minutes, but for now all you need to know is that it was definitely created by Hans
Holbein the younger and it definitely shows a woman from Henry VIII’s court. She is oddly
attired for a portrait though (and drawings such as these were intended as preparatory sketches
for portraits) and no one has ever been able to come up with a satisfactory explanation as
to why the Queen of England would choose to be portrayed in such an informal manner as this.
David Starkey and John Rowlands suggested in a 1983 article however (details of which are below)
that only a woman of such rank would be able to take such a liberty by being drawn in this way.
Rather than a gorgeous and expensive dress and hood, offset by fantastic jewels to show her
wealth and status, the lady in this drawing is ready for bed, though admittedly we can still see
that she is very well off even just by what she is wearing here. She boasts a costly nightgown,
lined with fur, which the Royal Collection Trust posits might be the 'black satin nightgown' given
by Henry to Anne during their courtship, though this is something plenty of other women at court
would have been able to afford too. On her head is an apparently white linen cap which covers her
ears and which is held in place by a band of lined fastened around her head and tied at the back.
She has an oval shaped face, straight nose, a slight double chin and though the drawing is
mostly in black chalk, in the original (and what you’re seeing here is actually a photograph of the
original) some hints of colour have been added, including a little bit of pink on the lips and
golden coloured hair, as you can see in this later coloured version of the drawing. Across the top
left of the image are the words ‘Anna Bollein Queen’ written in an eighteenth-century hand.
This drawing absolutely wasn’t done in the eighteenth century though,
so let’s turn our minds back to Henry VIII’s court to think about when it was created.
Hans Holbein made two visits to England. One was between 1526 and 1528. The other started
in 1531 or 1532 and ended with his death in London in 1543. During the first the drawings
he made were done on white paper. During his second he made them on slightly pink paper as
you see in these other examples of his work, which include a picture labelled Lady Parker
which is sometimes erroneously thought to be of Anne’s sister-in-law, Jane Parker Boleyn,
Viscountess Rochford. See my video on that picture to hear all about why that theory is incorrect.
As our Anna Bollein appears on the pink tinged paper this indicates
that the picture dates to the 1530s or early 1540s and of course if it is Anne,
it can’t postdate April 1536 as she was arrested at the beginning of May that year,
imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed there on 19th of that month. Is it her though?
Let’s start by asking if it looks like her. The only confirmed, contemporary picture
we have of her is a damaged portrait medal with a squashed nose which dates from 1534.
It shows a woman with high cheekbones and an oval face, but we can’t get much more from it.
The paintings we have of Anne were all created after her death, though some are old enough that
they are conceivably copies of lost originals. The most famous are the B pattern portraits,
so-called because they show Anne wearing her famous B pendant necklace. There is also the
Chequer’s ring which shows her and her daughter Elizabeth and which dates to the 1570s (I already
have videos on both the necklace and the ring by the way, which I’ll link below for you). These
all show a slim woman, with high cheek bones, brown hair and an oval face, but no double chin.
Those who saw Anne in person also described her as brunette and moderately pretty.
There is a disagreement about when she was born with some (myself included) favouring a year of
about 1501 and others arguing for around 1507, but either way, the sitter in the Holbein drawing
looks to be in the correct age range for a picture done in the 1530s. She does look noticeably
heavier than Anne was reported to be, but we might argue that she was pregnant when this likeness
was taken. John Rowlands and David Starkey also pointed out that a French observer on 31 May 1533,
when Anne entered London in preparation for her coronation said that she was scrofulous, meaning
that she suffered from the disease then called scrofula, now known as tuberculous lymphadenitis.
This can cause swelling of the lymph nodes in the neck and might account for the thicker neck we see
in the sitter in Holbein’s drawing. This foreign observer said that Anne wore a high-necked dress
to hide the swelling, but this argument was rebuffed in 1994 by Anne’s leading biographer,
Eric Ives, who explained that ‘this reporter was virulently determined to interpret even
the traditional high-necked English coronation mantle to her discredit.’
For me, what it really tough to explain away is the hair colour. The woman in the picture
has golden blonde hair and no one ever said that Anne was anything but brunette.
Other problems emerge when we turn the page over for on its back are some heraldic devices, none of
which belonged to Anne (here is an image of her coat of arms for comparison and her badge was a
falcon). What we see on the reverse of the Holbein drawing is the coat of arms of the Wyatt family.
Sir Thomas Wyatt has long been rumoured to have had a romantic interest in Anne before she married
Henry and he was one of the men arrested at the same time as her under suspicion of
having had an affair with her. Unlike the others though, he escaped with his head.
As you can see from this drawing, he also had his likeness taken by Holbein during the 1530s and
given that the Wyatt arms appear on the other side of our Anna Bollein picture, we must wonder if
she was in fact a member of his family who had her image taken at around the same time as Sir Thomas.
Before I continue, please remember to give this video a thumbs up and for more on the
Tudors and much else, subscribe to the channel and switch on the notification bell so you never
miss one of my uploads. For more History Calling perks, including early access to ad-free videos,
you can check out the description box below for links to my social media and Patreon sites. I’d
also like to take this opportunity to thank those of you who do support me on Patreon,
or by making one-off donations using the Thanks button beneath videos for your generosity,
as it helps me to make this a full-time job. And now, back to our mysterious picture.
With such problems associated with identifying this picture as Anne, you might be wondering who
even said it was her in the first place? Well it wasn’t Holbein, I can tell you that much. As I’ve
mentioned the lettering on this drawing dates to the 18th century and the reason it was labelled as
her at that point is because of its provenance. Today the drawing is held at Windsor Castle as
part of the royal collection and is one of a set of over 80 drawings of members of Henry VIII’s
court by Holbein. Though originally owned by that King, this book of drawings has descended to the
current royals in quite a circuitous fashion (and apologies if the following information is
repetitive for you, as the drawing has the same provenance as the Lady Parker image I
showed you earlier, so I have to repeat some of the information from my video on her).
Initially the collection of drawings passed to Henry’s son, Edward VI, upon Henry’s death in
1547, after which it went (presumably by sale or by gift) to Henry FitzAlan, 12th Earl of Arundel.
He died in 1580 and left them to his son-in-law, John, Lord Lumley.
We think they were later owned by Henry, Prince of Wales, son of James I of England before being
inherited by his younger brother, Charles I. Charles gave them to Philip Herbert, 4th Earl
of Pembroke in 1627 or 1628, who then gave them to Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel. They were
brought back into royal ownership by Charles II in 1675 and have stayed there ever since. While in
Lumley’s possession though, the pictures (which were gathered together in a book) were listed
in an inventory of his goods taken in 1590 and published in 1904. It describes the book as quote:
A great booke of Pictures done by Haunce Holbyn of certeyne Lordes,
Ladyes, gentlemen and gentlewomen in King Henry the 8: his tyme, their names
subscribed by Sr John Cheke Secretary to King Edward the 6 wch booke was King Edward the 6.
Sir John Cheke then is the man credited with saying that this image showed Anne.
Now Cheke died in 1557, so we must assume that at the time the 1590 inventory was
made there existed a separate list, now lost and that it was this list,
or a copy of it, which was used in the 18th century in order to provide the inscription.
This therefore requires a leap of faith on our part, for we don’t actually know for sure that the
later inscriptions on any of the drawings in this ‘great booke’ genuinely originated with Cheke.
We have no document written in his hand stating that the woman in the nightcap
and fur-trimmed nightgown is Anne Boleyn and we have to trust that some other, unknown person,
read his information and interpreted it correctly when adding this legend onto the drawing. It’s
far from an ideal chain of evidence. Just for the sake of argument though, let’s assume for
a minute that he did indicate that this image was of Anne. Can we trust his identification?
John Cheke was born in 1514 and became a tutor to the then Prince Edward,
later Edward VI, in 1544, having previously studied and worked at Cambridge University.
He was therefore not at court during the 1520s and 1530s when Anne was there.
Starkey and Rowlands argue that he will have known what she looked like though,
writing that one of Cheke’s patrons in the early to mid 1530s was Henry’s doctor, William Butts,
who in turn obtained most of his patronage from Anne at this time ultimately leading to Cheke
himself even being able to ask her for a favour for a friend. Thus, say Rowlands and Starkey,
he must have known her and known what she looked like, though I remain a little sceptical myself
as I’m not aware of any direct evidence that they met. If he didn’t ever see her in person,
he might still have been able to recognise her if he was exposed to other portraits of her,
taken from life and now lost to us but which he thought the drawing looked like. He might
also have seen a family resemblance between her and her daughter, Elizabeth. We just don’t know.
What we can say however, is that there are glaring errors in the attributions given to some other
pictures, supposedly on his authority. This image of Thomas More’s foster daughter, Margaret Gigges,
for instance is called Mother Jak, as you can see by the inscription on the top left.
In fact, it is a study for the large group portrait of More and his family which
Holbein painted in the 1520s and you can see Margaret on the far left of the final portrait,
looking pretty much exactly like she does in the mislabelled drawing. The real Mother Jack
was Edward’s nursemaid and a woman whom Cheke must certainly have known, making me wonder if
these labels really did originate with him, or if he was just really bad at recognising people.
Anne’s leading biographer, Eric Ives, was certainly not convinced that the Anna Bollein
image was her. In his biography of the Queen (linked below for you), he noted that in 1649
when the Czech engraver, Wenceslaus Hollar, had the option of engraving either the image now at
Windsor which we are studying in this video, or another Holbein drawing now said to be of
Anne and held by the British Museum, he chose the British Museum one, making this engraving based on
it. Both were in the possession of his patron, the 14th Earl of Arundel, during Hollar’s lifetime and
so he had access to and could have chosen either one. The one he selected has a 17th century label
identifying it as the dead Queen but as Ives says, ‘Why Hollar selected that as a likeness
of Anne it is impossible to say; either he had advice or the Windsor drawing had not yet been
claimed as “Anne”’. Furthermore, we don’t know if the tag on what is now the British Museum image,
which labels it as Anne was put there because of Hollar’s etching, or was already in place
at the time he saw it. In a separate article about images of Anne, Ives also argues that
neither drawing looks like the portrait medal of her, nor do they look like each other.
In addition, he completely rejects the idea that the Queen would have appeared in the
state of undress we see in the Anna Bollein image, asking where on earth the final painting it would
have been used to create could have been hung and saying that some sort of link between the artist
and the sitter is a much more likely explanation for the level of intimacy implied by this picture.
So where does all this leave us? Well, I have to say that though I sometimes use this image of Anne
in my videos on her, as we have so few of her to work with, having now looked into it in this level
of detail I’m actually very sceptical that this is her and will probably try to avoid using it
as much as possible going forwards. Sure, it’s a woman from Henry’s court during the 1530s or
1540s, but there’s really nothing to convincingly connect it to Anne. The hair colour is wrong,
the presentation of the lady in her nightwear is problematic, she looks nothing like other images
of the Queen, there is Wyatt family heraldry on the back of it, the inscription is 200 years out
of date and it relies on John Cheke, a man who may have never met the former Mistress
Boleyn and whose supposed identification of other drawings is demonstrably wrong in some instances,
or may have been misinterpreted by later writers through no fault of his own.
As always though, I’m keen to hear what you make of this. Let me know in the comments if
you think it does or doesn’t show Anne and why you hold that opinion and if
you’d like to learn more about this infamous Queen, check out one of these videos next.
Whatever you choose, please enjoy and until next time, keep learning.