A.I. Is Rewriting the Anne Boleyn Portrait Record
A facial-recognition model is prompting a fresh look at two Hans Holbein drawings long tied to Anne Boleyn, and the findings cut against received wisdom in both cases. Researchers at the University of Bradford argue that the drawing traditionally identified as Anne may instead depict her mother, Elizabeth Howard, while a work titled Unidentified Woman appears more likely to show Anne herself.
The study, published in Heritage Science, uses biometric analysis to compare the sitters with authenticated Tudor portraits. In the first case, the researchers say the drawing aligns more closely with Elizabeth I, with a 75 percent similarity that they consider consistent with a grandmother-granddaughter relationship. That reading also fits contemporary descriptions of Anne Boleyn as a dark-haired woman with a slight neck, rather than the blonde, fuller-faced sitter in the drawing.
The second image points in the opposite direction. Unidentified Woman, the researchers write, matches those same historical descriptions and shows a 76.9 percent similarity with the authenticated portrait of 13-year-old Elizabeth I. They also note that the work is drawn on pink preparatory paper, a material Holbein used only during his second period in England, from 1532 to 1543, which overlaps with Anne’s reign.
The reassessment arrives amid a broader reexamination of Anne Boleyn’s visual legacy. Infrared analysis of another portrait, the so-called Rose portrait, has suggested that the sitter’s hands were altered to counter Elizabethan rumors that Anne was a witch with physical deformities. That painting, completed decades after her execution during the reign of her daughter, is held by Hever Castle in Kent, southern England, where an exhibition of around 30 depictions of Anne Boleyn is now on view.
Portrait attribution has always depended on a fragile mix of evidence: inscriptions, provenance, costume, and the shifting assumptions of later centuries. What makes this study notable is not simply its use of A.I. but the way it reopens a familiar Tudor image to a more exacting kind of scrutiny. In Anne Boleyn’s case, the face that history thought it knew may belong to someone else entirely.
