The quest to find a contemporary portrait of Anne Boleyn, as opposed to posthumous, later sixteenth century portraits has taken a new turn with the publication of new research which has used current facial recognition techniques on portraits of her daughter and other relatives to seek common features. This evidence has then been applied to the unidentified portraits amongst the Holbein drawings in the Royal Collection.
The result has been to suggest one drawing in particular as a possible portrait of the controversial Queen.
Some art historians are highly sceptical about the methodology as blending two different types of image. This is all outlined in a report on the BBC News website, which can be seen at Scientists believe they have found previously unknown sketch of Anne Boleyn. There is also a short video about the research which can be viewed at Computing: Is this actually what Anne Boleyn looked like?
I would not claim expertise to pronounce either way about the proposed identification, but I would hesitate to dismiss it out of hand. I do not think the drawing long labelled as being of Anne very convincing, and the one suggested as being her does perhaps look more likely but that may be a consequence of the fact that it more closely resembles the well-known but posthumous portraits.
One might wonder, adapting Marlowe, looking at any of these images of Anne Boleyn if this was the face that launched a revolution and displaced almost a thousand years of faith.
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