Anna Bolena (Anne Boleyn)

Possible Anne Boleyn portrait found using facial recognition software

She won the heart of King Henry VIII, divided the church and lost her head. But nearly 500 years after Anne Boleyn met her death, only one uncontested portrait of her remains.

Pictures of the beguiling queen – who is played by a steely Claire Foy in the hit BBC historical drama Wolf Hall – were roundly destroyed after her death in 1536. The concerted effort to erase her from history was thorough, leaving only a battered lead disc as a contemporary likeness, the Moost Happi medal in the British Museum in London.

But another portrait from the late 16th century has emerged as a likely painting of the queen. Researchers in California used state-of-the-art face recognition to compare the face on the Moost Happi medal with a number of paintings and found a close match with the privately owned Nidd Hall portrait, held at the Bradford Art Galleries and Museums.

The Nidd Hall artwork shows a woman wearing jewellery long thought to be Boleyn’s. But scholars have been divided on the figure’s identity. Some claim the woman is Boleyn’s successor, Jane Seymour, the third wife of King Henry VIII.

Amit Roy-Chowdhury, head of the video computing group at the University of California in Riverside, turned his expertise in computer face-recognition to renaissance art after he was asked for help by an art historian, Conrad Rudolph, a colleague at the university. “I had no idea about what art history really was,” he said. “My last interaction with art was probably some time in middle school.”

Three years later, Roy-Chowdhury has developed a program that learns to identify faces from their anatomical dimensions, such as the width of their noses, and the distance between their eyes, and more distinctive features, such as whether they have one straight eyebrow and one curved. After training the computer on pictures of known people, it can scan images of unknown characters and churn out probabilities on their identities.

Anna Bolena ritrova la facciaAnna Bolena ritrova la faccia

Ha conquistato il cuore di re Enrico VIII, diviso la chiesa d’Inghilterra ed è stata decapitata nel 1536 nella Torre di Londra per tradimento e stregoneria. Ma 500 anni dopo la sua morte, Anna Bolena, la più famosa delle mogli del re d’Inghilterra, è anche quella la cui immagine è più avvolta dal mistero. È dubbio che sia lei la donna in quelli che erano considerati due famosi ritratti della regina, conservati alla National Portrait Gallery di Londra. Mentre «il ritratto di Nidd Hall», che si riteneva fosse il ritratto della terza moglie di Enrico VIII, Jane Seymour, potrebbe invece essere quello della Bolena. Lo sostengono dei ricercatori californiani che hanno applicato ai dipinti una sofisticata tecnica di riconoscimento dei volti basata su un algoritmo. Come riferimento gli scienziati hanno usato una miniatura del British Musuem, considerata l’unica immagine autentica della seconda moglie di Enrico VIII, la famosa medaglia «Moost Happi», un disco di piombo di quattro centimetri di diametro. La loro conclusione è che «Anna Bolina», copia della fine del XVI secolo di un dipinto del 1533, e il «ritratto del Castello di Hever» non ritraggono la regina che fu «casus belli» per lo scisma della Chiesa anglicana. Le sue fattezze sono tramandate solo grazie a una serie di ritratti postumi di cui appunto «Nidd Hall» è un esemplare.

Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second Queen and mother of Elizabeth I, who was beheaded on charges of incest and adultery, was a woman of such power and mystery that many thought her a witch. Now, her legend is brought to life in a fascinating, vividly written biography by one of our most distinguished contemporary novelists. A dark-haired beauty, not yet twenty, Anne Boleyn was torn away from her first and only love by order of a lustful, determined King. But equally determined and strong-willed herself, Anne Boleyn swore revenge and refused Henry’s attentions – unless he made her Queen. Thus was set into motion the extraordinary series of events – spanning ten years – that resulted in the irreversible break between the Church of England and the Church of Rome. But for the woman who so captivated the King that he defied the Pope to marry her, why was her fall from favor so sudden and complete? Only three years after the long-awaited marriage, Henry conspired with his chief minister to have Anne Boleyn accused of adultery with five men – one of them her own brother. Beheaded along with her “paramours,” the mystery still remains as to what happened after her death. Was she secretly buried – under a blank slab of black marble – in a remote Norfolk church? And does her ghost walk there still? That Anne Boleyn was no ordinary woman is confirmed by the historic events she precipitated; hers is a story all the more extraordinary for its being true. Drawing on letters, diaries and accounts of the period, Norah Lofts has captured, with remarkable sensitivity and insight, the indomitable spirit of a most unusual woman. The great figures of the period emerge with equal clarity: Henry himself, as a man obsessed with obtaining the unobtainable; Katharine, pathetic in her devotion – but admirable in her piety; the faithful Wolsey, unfairly betrayed by Anne; the legendary Sir Thomas More. More than simply a biography, “Anne Boleyn” is the intense drama of a willful, ambitious woman who managed to dominate and equally willful King; whose power over Henry VIII – so great that it bred suspicions of spells and sorcery – ended by changing the course of history. "The writing is lovely - gentle and strong, wholehearted and precise, a please to wonder over." - The New Yorker. "What a gift Miss Lofts has for keeping us turning the pages of her books!" - Homes and Gardens.

Acclaimed and beloved historical novelist Norah Lofts brings to life the danger, romance, and intrigue of the Tudor court that forever altered the course of English history. The king first noticed Anne Boleyn as a heartbroken sixteen-year-old, sullen and beautiful after a thwarted romance with the son of the Earl of Northumberland. "All eyes and hair," a courtier had said disparagingly of her, but when King Henry VIII fell for young Anne, nothing could keep him from what he desired. Against common sense and the urgings of his most trusted advisors, Henry defied all, blindly following his passion for Anne, using the power he held over the bodies and souls of all who reside in his realm and beyond. Anne's ascent to the throne elevates her from lady-in-waiting to the highest position a woman could attain, but her life spirals out of control when Henry is driven to desperate acts of betrayal and violence. The consequences of Anne's rise to power and eventual demise are felt well beyond the inner circle of the court. Loyalties, to church, to queen, to country, are tested, and -- in the wake of the king's volatile passions -- can be an unpredictable matter of life and death. First published in 1963 and adored by readers for generations, Lofts' lush and moving portrayal of the ambitious and doomed Anne Boleyn will continue to reign as a classic retelling of this epic chapter of history vividly brought to life.

Il primo è una breve biografia - meno di 300 pagine, il secondo è un romanzo. Sono andata a controllare, e ne parlava la Bordo nel suo libro: Anne diventa cinica e calcolatrice dopo essere stata separata da Percy, e commette adulterio con tre uomini diversi durante un ballo in maschera per rimanere incinta.

And I said, ‘The poorest subject the King hath, hath justice.’ And there with she laughed.

Anne did, finally, have a nemesis. Her nemesis, on the long view, was her own love and husband, the very named Henry Tudor. [...]It was Henry who permitted Cromwell and the others to turn the coup that brought down Anne in hours flat. Henry refused to see her then nor listen to any of her view. It was Henry who forced Cranmer across the river at Lambeth to declare their marriage null and void on account of her "adultery". And it was Henry who married Jane within the closest possible span of time after Anne's execution.
Was it gender that undid Anne? Was it power? Was Anne a martyr to the power of the male over the female? Was sex her tool and also her self-inflicted prison? [...] Or was it theology? Did Anne come too close to the illicit flame of subversive ideas emanating from Luther and from his English pupil William Tyndale? Anne did not see herself principally as a Christian martyr. She saw herself as a person who had gambled with very high stakes and lost.