A portrait of ANNE BOLEYN or JANE SEYMOUR? Does the Nidd Hall portrait show Anne Boleyn?

Does the NIDD HALL PORTRAIT show Anne Boleyn or Jane Seymour? At first glance, the woman in the picture wearing an AB brooch must surely be Anne for those were her initials and she’s wearing the famous Tudor consort necklace, seen in another image of her and in portraits of three of Henry VIII’s other wives. This portrait pattern also reappears in a 1618 engraving by Renold Elstrack and published by Henry Holland in a book called Baziliwlogia, where it is also identified as Anne. Further weight seemed to be added to the argument in 2015 when numerous media outlets reported that facial recognition software had matched the Nidd Hall portrait to the famous portrait medal of Anne Boleyn created in 1534 and held by the British Museum. As this medal (known as ‘the moost happi’ medal because it bears Anne’s motto) is the only confirmed, contemporary likeness of her, if this was true it would have been an important factor in identifying the sitter.

Unfortunately, there are numerous problems with associating the Nidd Hall portrait, which is now owned by the Mountgarret family and kept in Bradford Art Galleries and Museums, with the mother of Elizabeth I. She looks nothing like Anne’s other portraits in which the Queen usually wears her famous B pendant and instead more closely resembles Jane Seymour (assuming the AB brooch was a later addition to the picture). The engraving seems to be a copy of Jane’s portrait in the famous Whitehall Mural by Hans Holbein and the researchers behind the facial recognition software have stated that their findings were misrepresented by the media. So what can we make of all this? In today’s six wives documentary from History Calling we look at this piece of Tudor art history and ask, is the Nidd Hall portrait Anne Boleyn or Jane Seymour, or is she simply a mystery woman, whose name is lost to time?

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LEARN MORE

Roland Hui, ‘A Reassessment of Queen Anne Boleyn’s Portraiture’
(https://tudorfaces.blogspot.com/2015/...) (accessed 1 Feb. 2024).

Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005)
https://amzn.to/3xLivgr
Susan Bordo, The Creation of Anne Boleyn: In Search of the Tudors' Most Notorious Queen (One World Publications, 2014)
https://amzn.to/3zznLY1
Sarah Morris and Natalie Grueninger, In the Footsteps of Anne Boleyn (2013)
https://amzn.to/2W9oJct
Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives Of Henry VIII (2nd edn, Phoenix, 2009) https://amzn.to/36IqD5r
David Starkey, Six Wives: the Queens of Henry VIII (Vintage, 2004)
https://amzn.to/3wImKIh

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Six Wives with Lucy Worsley (2016 docu-drama)
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Thumbnail: Nidd Hall portrait. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
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