AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Anne Boleyn is arguably one of the most well-known figures in Tudor history. She was King Henry VIII's second wife of six wives, and she was famously beheaded at the Tower of London for treason in 1536. But the way she actually looked in real life still remains a mystery, mostly informed by one iconic portrait painted decades after her death. Now, Owen Emmerson, a Tudor historian, has a bold claim. The face in that portrait is not actually of Anne Boleyn but that of her daughter, Elizabeth I. Emmerson is also the cocurator of an exhibition of Anne Boleyn's likenesses, and he joins us now to talk about his theory. Welcome.
OWEN EMMERSON: Hello there. It's such a pleasure to be with you.
CHANG: Oh, such a pleasure to have you. So this portrait that we just mentioned - it's a very famous one. It's at London's National Portrait Gallery. And although it's always been described as depicting Anne Boleyn, you think it is actually her daughter. Tell us why.
EMMERSON: Yeah. So thanks to the research of a gentleman called Lawrence Hendra, an art historian, he has actually identified the style of the artist who created that portrait of Anne Boleyn and has linked it to a number of different paintings, which all have Elizabeth's face on them.
CHANG: And the importance of linking this particular or, at least, ostensible portrait of Anne Boleyn to Elizabeth I's likeness is to show a legitimate line of succession.
EMMERSON: Yes. That's exactly it. It...
CHANG: It's like political propaganda, in a way.
EMMERSON: It really is. And at that time, Elizabeth has been excommunicated from the Catholic Church. There are increasing Catholic plots questioning her legitimacy. And therefore, her image is used almost retrospectively, not just mapped on to her mother, but also her half-sister and also on her paternal great grandfather, Edward IV. So this really is Elizabeth saying, I am my mother's daughter, but I'm also related to Edward IV.
CHANG: And therefore, I am the rightful ruler.
EMMERSON: Exactly that. This is her way of visualizing her ancestry.
CHANG: What did Anne Boleyn look like, if you could put it into words?
EMMERSON: So we've seen some really beautiful actresses playing her on screen, from sort of Charlotte Rampling...
CHANG: And Natalie Portman.
EMMERSON: Yeah, Natalie Portman - knockout. But actually, her contemporaries were less impressed with her looks. The je ne sais quoi that everyone said she had, and a magnetic presence, too, was about the Francophile culture that she had soaked up in the seven years that she was educated there. That is what made her stand out, not her beauty.
CHANG: Well, I want to talk about this exhibition that's coming up next month. It's at Hever Castle, which is the childhood home of Anne Boleyn. And I understand the exhibition will include 30 depictions of her, including some newly identified paintings made during her lifetime. Do you see a lot of difference between those paintings and the one that we've been talking about at the National Portrait Gallery?
EMMERSON: They are different. And more broadly, we're going to be taking visitors back, right from sort of the Victorian era, room by room, looking at likenesses that were created in different eras...
CHANG: Yeah.
EMMERSON: ...And trying to understand how multiple generations understood Anne's appearance over time.
CHANG: How did Anne's image change over 500 years?
EMMERSON: She tended to get a lot more beautiful than the contemporary...
CHANG: (Laughter).
EMMERSON: ...Likenesses of her.
CHANG: Every woman's dream.
EMMERSON: Yeah. No. Totally.
CHANG: The older you get, the more beautiful you become.
EMMERSON: Yeah. And we're going to be inviting visitors to sort of peel back the layers of varnish as they go through the exhibition, and to consider, you know, how many layers of veneer really were on those later portraits, when we get closer to the woman of history.
CHANG: That is Tudor historian Owen Emmerson. He's also the author of a book titled, "Capturing The (ph) Queen: The Image Of Anne Boleyn." It's out next month. Thank you so much for joining us, Owen.
EMMERSON: It's been a pleasure.
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