The original sitters of two sketches by Hans Holbein related to Anne Boleyn were correctly identified – thanks to artificial intelligence.
Hans Holbein was a German-born artist who escaped his homeland and found abode in England – first under Oliver Cromwell and then under Anne Boleyn, the second wife of English king Henry VIII. He was part of the English Royal court between 1526 and 1543, until his death. While he made a vast number of portraits, most of the subjects of his works remain unidentified. For instance, the Royal Collections Trust own 85 works by Holbein but only 30 of them have clearly identified subjects.
Now, however, new research has helped shed light on these mysteries. Published in npj Heritage Science, the study was undertaken by Karen L. Davies and Hassan Ugali. Davies is a historian while Ugali is a computer science professor. Their initial investigation took note of how many of works carried inscriptions that did not match contemporary eyewitness descriptions.
Ugali created a matrix of the entire available collection of Hans Holbein and clustered similar paintings together. The study brought some surprising revelations. The subject of “An unidentified woman” was identified as Anne Boleyn herself. Meanwhile, it was also revealed that the work “Anne Boleyn” was not a portrait of Henry VIII’s wife but rather her mother. The Royal Collection Trust acknowledged that they might have initially misattributed the painting.
