Look over Getting a Queen review—there are so many pictures of Anne Boleyn that you’ll lose your mind.
Kent’s Hever Castle
Historians have put together the biggest collection of pictures of Henry VIII’s second wife, whom he started dating 500 years ago and killed ten years later. But do we really need a public vote to find the best likeness?
Right now, royal portraits are getting a lot of attention. Art historians are going crazy over the recent discovery of the Catherine of Aragon pendant. Hever Castle, which was the childhood home of her successor as queen, is taking advantage of its Tudor connection by putting on Capturing a Queen: The Image of Anne Boleyn. It has put together the most portraits of Boleyn that anyone has ever tried to make (Guinness, pay attention).
Owen Emmerson and Kate McCaffrey, the curators, say that this is a “fitting [way] to mark the quincentennial anniversary of Henry VIII’s courtship of Anne.” I’m also looking forward to the exhibition for the 500th anniversary of her execution.
It looks like an interesting piece of art history research, connoisseurship, and visual analysis that goes well with the castle’s rich history. Recent technical analysis of its own Hever “Rose” Boleyn portrait, which is the earliest known rose-holding variant, is at the heart of the show. Other new ideas include the idea that Henry VIII did not systematically erase all Boleyn imagery after her execution in 1536, which is not what most people think. The big question that hangs over the whole thing is: what did Anne Boleyn look like? The curators know how hard it is to resist the real likeness seeing the real face that inspired a million TV shows, films and musicals, and that just happened to cause a small fight with Rome that would change the course of religion in England.
The idea of likeness becomes more complicated when you think about how people depicted Boleyn during her lifetime or in later centuries. The choice of pictures on display seems to be based on what is available and a desire to collect as many as possible. Walking into a collection of Boleyn portraits from the 16th to 18th centuries in a low-ceilinged exhibition space in the winding, spiral staircase-punctuated castle is definitely a surreal experience. All Annes are shown in three-quarter profile head and shoulders, at about the same size, and wearing different types of iconographic regalia.
The assembly is an accomplishment just from an organisational point of view
. For example, the presence of a portrait from the Countess of Rosse collection, which the curators say looks a lot like one from the famous National Portrait Gallery, is amazing. The Lyndhurst Mansion portrait is also on loan in the UK for the first time. Emmerson is clearly a crazy collector himself, with a lot of his own Boleyn-related things on display. These include a 19th-century copy of the clock Henry gave Anne on their wedding day (the original is in the royal collection) and The Arrest of Anne Boleyn, a painting from about 1870. This shows that there are issues with availability. A picture of the Chequers Ring, which shows Elizabeth and her mother Anne, is the most convincing piece of evidence for the thesis that Elizabeth I restored iconographic links to Boleyn. The real thing is hidden away at the prime minister’s Buckinghamshire retreat.
It is impossible to determine Boleyn’s true likeness. Tudor portraiture was designed to create a certain aura of piety, power, and prestige, along with a basic reference to the original face. This practice continued into the Elizabethan era, as shown by the Virgin Queen’s deliberately mask-like, emotionless face in portraits of her. The assembly looks like fun-house mirrors because Anne’s rough likeness is clearly used as a template, and each artist tries to get the same proportions, but not always perfectly.
Hans Holbein the Younger drew this sketch of a woman around 1534
Hans Holbein the Younger’s Portrait of a Lady, a sketch of Anne Boleyn from around 1534. Photograph: Alamy The curators ask, “Do any of these faces show the real Anne Boleyn, or just the legend she became?” It seems that only Holbein’s rare talent could or would give his portraits a human warmth and realism. This is clear in the copy of a drawing of Anne looking down in profile, which is very different from all the other cookie-cutter ones in terms of how she looks. But is it really of Anne? The caption says, “New research makes a strong case that this is the most complete modern likeness of Anne that has survived.” Where can I find this exciting new research? It doesn’t seem to be easy for regular visitors to get to.
Putting together the collection of Anne portraits
Which covers a couple of centuries and has complicated relationships between different groups, makes it hard for the average person to follow, and the labels are all over the place. There is no key that tells you what the stamps on some labels mean when they say they are part of the “Bradford,” “Pearl,” “Rose,” “Windsor,” and “Moost happi” groups, or which piece is the “original” inspiration for the others. Throughout, you have to deal with language that is hard to pin down, like when Nidd Hall’s portrait is called “one of the most persuasive likenesses associated with Anne Boleyn.”
People are asked to vote on a small screen for the group that “best represents” Anne Boleyn, skipping the impossible question of likeness and instead asking, well, what exactly? Unfortunately, we don’t have a skull dug up from a parking lot to help reconstructive wizards figure out Anne’s true image once and for all.
