Researchers Say They've Maybe Confirmed Another Anne Boleyn Portrait
LatestThere’s only one agreed-upon contemporary portrait of Anne Boleyn, because when a king dumps you, he lops off your head and everybody scrubs your face from the historical record. But researchers think they’ve found a second one knocking around, after all these years.
The Guardian reports that researchers at the University of California at Riverside, led by Amit Roy-Chowdhury, programmed their facial recognition software using confirmed depictions of several famous people, then turned it loose on paintings featuring people who are unidentified or unconfirmed. Based on the only uncontested depiction of Boleyn from her own time, the “Moost Happi” medal, the program suggested that the woman in the so-called Nidd Hall portrait is likely Henry VIII’s second wife. Historians have long suspected the woman in the painting was wearing Boleyn’s jewelry, but thought it could’ve been the next wife, Jane Seymour. (Ice cold.)