"Who was Anne Boleyn? She rose to power in the early 1530s, having played a strategic game to secure position as King Henry VIII 's second wife. Posthumously, after he had her framed for treason and beheaded, her legacy would live on, shapeshifting in the public imagination to become a witch, a martyr, and eventually a feminist icon. Over the centuries, Anne's image has been a mirror to the times."
"Other portraits of Anne that were made in her lifetime include the "Moost Happi" medal portrait at the British Museum and a drawing, probably by Hans Holbein the Younger, belonging to the Royal Collection. These images show Boleyn with much lighter, possibly auburn hair, in stark contrast to the dark hair she sports in some later portraits and in more recent cinematic portrayals."
Anne Boleyn rose to prominence in the early 1530s as King Henry VIII's second wife, before being accused of treason and executed in 1536. Her posthumous reputation shifted over time, taking forms as witch, martyr, and later feminist symbol that reflected changing societal views. A Hever Castle exhibition assembles portraits, medals, and costumes to reveal how visual representations shaped and reshaped her legacy. Recent discoveries of contemporaneous likenesses — including a 1530s woodcut, the "Moost Happi" medal and a probable Hans Holbein drawing — challenge the claim that all of her portraits were destroyed and suggest different physical attributes than later images.
Read at Artnet News
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]