“I think the whole story genuinely does revolve around the portrait,” Franny Moyle, author of The King’s Painter: The Life and Times of Hans Holbein says. “So I suppose in some respects, history could be forgiven for blaming it.”
In 1537, Henry’s third wife Jane Seymour died from complications after childbirth, mercifully before she could die from complications of Henry VIII. And after a short period of bereavement, Henry, aided by top adviser Thomas Cromwell, began searching for a replacement. It was deemed imperative to find a foreign bride this time around, as Henry had isolated himself from the rest of Europe a decade earlier when he threw a tantrum over marrying Anne Boleyn and broke with the Pope.
Following a series of failed negotiations with the representatives of Europe’s most attractive young pawns, Cromwell’s steely gaze fell upon the second daughter of John III and Maria of Jülich-Berg, Duke and Duchess of Cleves, in modern day Germany. An alliance with the protestant German principalities would fortify Henry against the pro-Papal union of France and Spain. But contemporary reports of Anne’s charms were evasive and not overly promising, so in 1539 the king sent Holbein over to paint her picture.
Holbein, respected, trusted, and German himself, was known for his genius at capturing life on the canvas. It was “his superpower, to use a current turn of phrase,” says Moyle. And given Henry’s penchant for removing the heads of anyone he felt deceived by (or even not), “he would not have dared to mislead the king.”
What came back—“rushed across Europe” on horseback by Holbein himself—reportedly so delighted Henry that marriage negotiations began immediately. The portrait (now hanging in the Louvre), which Moyle deems “one of the most ‘vanilla’ depictions of a woman’s face in Holbein’s oeuvre,” might not have been sexy, per say, but it was sending all the right signals to the Tudor king.
“The blank facial expression Holbein captured reflected Anne’s sheltered upbringing and her cautious personality,” says Moyle. “Holbein is at once signaling this, while also suggesting, perhaps she is a blank canvas to be molded by the king.” Her full frontal pose mimics contemporary portraits of the Virgin Mary, suggesting she’d be an “appropriate virgin mother to the king’s young son.”
The full face, straight-ahead pose is another argument for the portrait’s veracity. Holbein wasn’t doing Anne any favors facing her directly at the camera, so to speak. “That’s a less flattering, unsparing pose,” says Goldring. “There’s no room to hide. Whereas when you’ve got someone pivoted to one side, you can show their best side if you want to.”
Contemporary accounts of the portrait confirm its accuracy. An envoy who accompanied Holbein on the mission described the painting in a letter to the king as “lively, which in 16th-century English meant lifelike or realistic,” says Goldring. He “would have known he was sticking his neck out if that wasn’t true.”
Portrait of King Henry VIII by Hans Holbein the Younger
Fine Art/Getty Images
