Anne Boleyn's Re-constructed Face Revealed, with History

hello everyone and welcome back to royalty now studios where we bring figures from the past to life with recreations and talk about their history today we'll be talking about one of my all-time favorite figures anne boleyn now anne is notorious for being the second wife of king henry viii and eventually being wrongfully executed on his orders first we'll talk about her life and her fascinating history i'll go through the individual portrait sevan declaring which one i think is the most accurate and comparing them to the only contemporary image we have of her and then of course i will reveal my recreations i've got two brand new ones to share with you today so let's go ahead and get started [Music] the interesting thing about ambolyn is that she was never meant to be queen in fact she wasn't supposed to feature in english history at all she was in fact supposed to marry an irish lord and disappear from the records because her meteoric rise didn't occur until her mid-life in the 1520s much of anne's life has gone unrecorded and much of what we do have recorded is from hostile sources sources whose opinions are tainted by the insane ruptures in politics that her queen ship caused anne boleyn was much more than the reputation that she has gained throughout the centuries so let's first talk about what we do know about the early life of anne boleyn she was born in either 1501 or 1507. scholars cannot agree and this makes her either 36 or 29 at the time of her beheading in 1536 as a young woman ann received some of her education in the burgundian netherlands the court of margaret of austria she also spent time in france as the maid of honor to queen mary tudor and later to the queen claude these were courts full of intelligent enlightened women that no doubt shaped her when anne is called to return to the tudor court in 1522 she has this era of foreign attractiveness to her that the other tudor women do not have she now speaks fluent french she's been educated by some of the brightest minds she's even possibly met leonardo da vinci during his brief residence in france at this time in england the young and still handsome henry viii has been married to the spanish princess catherine of aragon for many years but their marriage has become strained due to the numerous miscarriages and still bursts that catherine has endured leaving only one daughter princess mary as their only surviving child henry has grown restless he's anxious for a male heir he does have his one bastard son from his former mistress bessie blunt but it's not enough henry fitzroy is not a legitimate heir to the throne of england so it's in 1522 that anne is recalled from her studies in france to reside back at the tudor court you see the original reason that anne came home from france was to marry her irish cousin james butler in order to settle a property dispute but the marriage negotiations brokered by a certain cardinal woolsey failed now it's speculated that anne had a few quote dalliances in her early years back at court namely with henry percy and thomas wyatt now the extent of these relationships comes into play later on when her loyalty is being questioned by the king but for now anne is one of the most intriguing women of the court and she's excelling at the game of courtly love so it was in 1526 that the eyes of the king have fallen upon the lady anne seventeen love letters exist penned in the king's own hand the early letters paint a picture of henry as a pining and desperately in love man who's being kept at a distance by his beloved by the later letters anne has accepted a proposal of marriage from the king so let's look at this timeline there are many reasons to believe that at the beginning of their courtship marriage was never the intended outcome of their relationship henry and his queen catherine had been unhappy for some time before he even sets his sights on amberlynn henry was likely just looking for a mistress someone to have fun with while he resolved his marital woes you see henry viii was actually a deeply religious man and he was living in a time when the church and religion was at the center of everything he begins to question why he has no sons with catherine you see catherine had originally been brought to england to marry his older brother arthur who died not long after their wedding it was said that catherine and arthur never even made their marriage binding never consummating it maybe there were answers in his religion for his unhappiness henry finds one answer in the book of leviticus which states if a man shall take his brother's wife it is an impurity and they shall be childless henry begins to consult his counselors about a possible annulment eric ives posits that even though henry was asking for a divorce he wasn't even thinking about anne boleyn as queen yet it happens to be after this that henry asks anne to be his mistress not his wife she refuses to become his mistress stating that she planned to keep her maidenhead only for her future husband so it was only later in the summer of 1527 that henry turns his sights to actually marrying anne not just making her his mistress by the autumn henry is petitioning the pope for a dispensation to marry anne it was assumed that an annulment would be granted fairly quickly kings usually get their way after all but to say that their road to marriage would not be an easy one would be a vast understatement catherine of aragon absolutely refused a divorce henry's main argument was the religious one that her marriage to his brother had made her unclean made their union cursed the pope refused this divorce vehemently his predecessor had granted them a special dispensation to marry all those years ago resolving the brother issue there and then so why would pope clement reverse that decision now it would be six long years before anne would become queen six long years of consultations with bishops councils and the pope anne's personal religion is not truly known to us today but she could certainly be described as evangelical she agreed with the burgeoning movement in europe that people should be able to read the bible in their own language it's without a doubt that she had an influence on henry during this time maybe even convincing him to take matters into his own hands which he dramatically does by separating from the catholic church and becoming the supreme head of a new church the church of england so despite the former queen still living henry and ann decide to marry in a secret ceremony that likely took place on the 14th of november in 1532 something interesting is that they may not have even engaged in a physical relationship until they believed they were legally married the archbishop of canterbury thomas cranmer formally dissolves the marriage between henry and catherine of aragon on the 23rd of may 1533 and this paves the way for anne to be crowned queen on june 1st anne is anointed on the famous cosmody pavement of westminster abbey she's visibly pregnant with the future heir and she's brimming with hope for the future unfortunately this hope won't last too long anne gives birth to a baby girl the future queen elizabeth the first on september 7th of 1533 of course there is this disappointment that she's not a son but the couple are still young and in love and they continue to try by 1535 anne is pregnant again she's hoping for a son but there are rumors that the couple quarrels that anne's independence and her headstrong nature things that were so alluring to henry during their courtship are now seen as liabilities and they're wearing on him it is in early 1536 that a domino effect begins to take place first on january 7th 1536 the former queen catherine dies later that month henry takes a near fatal fall off of his horse at a tournament after which he is unconscious for two hours this brush with death absolutely jars henry he's thinking how can he have been king of england for so long with no son what is wrong with his marriages that he simply cannot get what he wants only a few days later and miscarries and the baby was a boy many scholars argue that this brush with death not only made henry reevaluate his mortality but also may have actually changed his brain a brain injury making him into the paranoid and dangerous man he becomes later in his life after all these years he wasted trying to marry anne he feels betrayed now that catherine is gone if he left anne he would actually no longer be required to return to his former wife now that katherine is gone he would be free to take another his eyes land on the young lady jane seymour who is everything that anne is not where anne is considered swarthy and dark jane is fair and light where anne is headstrong and obstinate jane is docile and compliant it's a bit unclear when henry's gaze really turns to jane as a potential third wife but it doesn't take long before henry and his counsel particularly won thomas cromwell have trumped up charges of adultery against anne they claimed that not only was anne not a virgin before her wedding to henry only just over a thousand days ago but that she had also slept with several men during their marriage nearly all scholars agree that these charges are false henry's role is also somewhat unknown was he genuinely convinced and heartbroken that anne had been unfaithful to him convinced by his scheming counselors or did he aid in creating these charges against her [Music] anne is arrested on may 2nd of 1536 she is tried and found guilty and she is beheaded at the tower of london on may 19 1536 an innocent woman alongside her supposed lovers henry norris frances weston william brereton mark smeaton and her own brother george belin the poet thomas wyatt also one of the men in prison during the trial witnessed the executions from his cell in the bell tower he writes a heart-wrenching poem about the horrors he's witnessed aptly titled circa regna tonight in latin meaning around the throne thunder rolls anne's legacy continues with us till this day and she's not forgotten in fact her execution actually makes more sense once you look at it in hindsight when you see the erratic behavior of her husband king henry viii in the years after he gave her execution order in one of my favorite twists of history the baby daughter that henry was so disappointed by the future elizabeth the first goes on to be one of england's best monarchs ushering in a golden age [Music] so what did queen and berlin really look like one of the most unfortunate things about her being executed as a disgraced queen was that her image was essentially erased from england the palace walls which once held the initials h a are struck her portraits are painted over or destroyed and what we have left of her image is through posthumous portraits potential copies of copies of a lost original we do have one agreed upon contemporary image and that is a portrait medal referred to as the most happy medal that was struck during her lifetime probably to celebrate her second pregnancy and the upcoming birth of a son the talented artist lucy churchill did a restoration of the coin which he's allowing me to use here so i'm going to compare each postulated portrait of anne to the coin throughout the video to see which one matches the best as far as physical descriptions van we do have a few although how accurate these are is unknown as i said most of what we know of her comes from hostile sources who don't really have a vested interest in portraying her kindly the rumors that ambolyn had a deformed finger or large mole on her face are false they're pretty much created propaganda long after her death so the ones that are the most accurate are probably from the venetian diplomat francesco cenuto describing her as not one of the handsomest women in the world she is a middling stature swarthy complexion long neck wide mouth a bosom not much raised and eyes which are black and beautiful the french poet lancelot de carl calls her beautiful with an elegant figure [Music] now anne's body has never been officially exhumed it was hastily buried at the chapel of saint peter at vicula adjacent to the tower in an old elm box her exact burial spot under the tiles of the chapel is unknown there was a restoration of the chapel in 1876 under the guidance of queen victoria that had to exhume some bodies in order to do the work they left detailed notes of the skeletal remains that they found and even had them examined by a doctor he confirmed that the skeleton was of a woman between 25 and 30 with a delicate frame she was of slender proportions with a small lower jaw and she had particularly small vertebrae lending credence to that story that she had a little neck and she was probably between five feet and five foot three and of course no extra finger all of these findings match up with the physical descriptions we have a van but of course there's a possibility that the bones are not ann's but rather lady rajford's or even queen catherine howards there are two women who were hastily buried near her in the same spot in terms of painted portraits anne had a very strong connection with the painter holbein who very likely painted her portrait during her time as queen it's assumed that if her official portrait was painted the posthumous works we have today were copied from that work so let's take a look at some portraits that are supposed to be anne and discuss the case for each first let's look at a few of the holbein sketches on which one of my recreations is based [Music] this first one has historians john rollins and david starkey on its side it matches one of the french accounts of her having a swollen neck or double chin although as i mentioned before this isn't exactly a kind source to anne but the contentious thing about this portrait is twofold first it's her state of undress this woman is wearing a nightgown and a cap which is really casual garb for a queen famous for her sense of style to wear during a portrait sitting secondly there appears to be some gold trim near her cap and some say this is hair others say it's just a gold trim on the cap but it's hard to tell ann was famous for having dark hair so that just wouldn't track the one solid piece of evidence for this one is the inscription anna bolin queen this was added by a man named sir john cheek a man who would have known anne and therefore would have known what she looked like but some argue that it's just not authentic or that was added at a later date so let's compare this one to the image on the most happy metal [Music] then we have this other purported holbein image which i actually think looks very similar to the first even suggesting that they're the same woman i think that's really interesting it's been theorized that this is a sketch of the same woman just one state she's pregnant and in one state she's not i also think this one bears a slight resemblance to the possible holbein sketch of george berlin maybe that's just my own wishful thinking but they were siblings so there could be some resemblance there if that portrait ever got authenticated this one has the same kind of authentication issues as the first where the identification of ambolen was added later and therefore isn't very reliable so let's compare this one to the most happy middle [Music] i actually do see quite a lot of resemblance to this one with the fuller lips and the strong nose another one kind of in this style is referred to as the nid hall portrait and the only link that this one really has to anne boleyn is the a b brooch that you can see on her chest but there are some scholars particularly scholar roland twee who believes that this is actually a portrait of jane seymour that may have been misidentified throughout the years there's actually another variant of this portrait that has a jeweled brooch rather than the a b brooch kind of indicating that it was just changed up by the artist but there is an interesting tidbit where a piece of facial recognition software actually matched this portrait to the most happy metal and i do think they look fairly similar [Music] so then we have the famous national portrait gallery image which i've based two of my recreations on this portrait and several others have a very recognizable pattern suggesting that they may be all copies of that lost original we talked about apparently there was a full-length portrait of anne that may have existed as late as 1773. they're all dated after anne's death and they show her wearing the french hood black dress and famous bee necklace let's compare these portraits to the portrait medal as well [Music] so in terms of similarity to the metal which as i mentioned is the only agreed upon likeness of anne from her lifetime i think the closest resemblance to the coin is actually the nid hall portrait which i wasn't expecting to come to that conclusion at the end of this and i think a close second is the whole bind sketches because of the strong nose but in terms of the historical likelihood of which portrait i think would be anne i would go with the national portrait gallery pattern of images just because of their similarities they all look so similar that it would make sense if they were all copied from the same lost original which presumably would be that lost holbein portrait but these all have a really heavy level of stylization to them that the other ones like the sketches and the nid hall one just don't have so i'm sorry to leave you with such a nothing conclusion there but if i were to create or imagine the face of anne i believe it would be somewhere between the knid hall portrait and the hans holbein sketch that i've used for my recreation so let's go ahead and get to the recreations let's take a look at my recreations of anne boleyn from her own time as well as in the modern day now do so thank you all so much for watching i hope you learned something and enjoyed your time with anne make sure to like and subscribe if you want to support us bringing history back to life we will see you for the next video [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Royalty Now Studios

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Keywords: anne boleyn, anne boleyn and henry viii, anne boleyn appearance, anne boleyn body, anne boleyn death, anne boleyn documentary, anne boleyn portraits, anne boleyn true face, real faces of historical figures, real faces of the tudors, royalty now, royalty now studios, roylaty now, six wives of henry viii, the tudors, true faces of historical figures, tudor history, what did Anne Boleyn look like, what did anne boleyn look like in real life, what would anne boleyn look like now

Id: cetGiQPYRAU

Length: 20min 55sec (1255 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2022