Art historian with an interest in visual messages
Articles in various publications have looked at Franny Moyle’s suggestion that Holbein left clues regarding the identification of one of his sitters of his miniatures being of Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Anna, Duchess of Cleves and not Katherine Howard as suggested by George Vertue writing in the 18th century. The recent article about Moyle’s theory… Continue reading How we know the Tudor Royals from 1485 – 1558; and who painted them.
Anna, Duchess of Cleves (?) Hans Holbein the Younger (1497 - 1543) (?). Rosenbach Museum, Philadelphia, USA. Accession Number 1954.1923. When Heather Darsie’s consideration of Anna’s life and marriage was published in April 2019, the cover portrait (above) presented us with a completely different aspect of the duchess from the Holbein portrait that now hangs… Continue reading A Portrait of Anna, Duchess of Cleves : The King’s Beloved Sister
Just over twelve months ago I posted a short article on a painting held in a private collection. The owner describes his painting as ‘A unique, mysterious, unrecognised, unidentified painting’. The owner has a dedicated website (a link is in the footnote)[i] in the hope that someone will identify the subject matter, artistic attribution and provenance. … Continue reading Solve the puzzle of this 16th c painting for a £5,000 reward! An update.
For those not familiar with the genre of the portrait miniature, let us first consider why and when these portraits became popular in England, and the various artists creating these images for the Tudor court. The half millennium saw a marked change from the religious themes of the medieval period to secular subjects inspired by… Continue reading The origins of the Tudor portrait miniature
This is a work of fiction, but the images referred to all exist as did all the characters and the executions to which they refer. Like other writers of historical fiction, I have taken events as my skeleton and dressed it with the clothes of a possible event, placing imagined words into the mouths of… Continue reading Another Execution! – MV Taylor
Melanie V Taylor 