On May 19, 1536, a queen was beheaded at the Tower of London. It was Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second queen and the mother of Elizabeth I, who later brought about England's golden age. The charges were adultery, incest and treason—every grave crime was attached. Anne Boleyn was laden with every capital offense, but at the scaffold she instead said the king had done no wrong and asked that he be served with loyalty.
The king was cold. "Mercy" amounted only to commuting burning at the stake to beheading, and ordering a sword instead of an ax for a death without pain. After the execution, the king immediately took another queen. Anne Boleyn, who reigned for less than three years and came to be called the "queen of 1,000 days," became a taboo name in the royal family. Not a single portrait from her lifetime survived. Now, science has found the face of the ill-fated Queen Anne Boleyn after 490 years. She appears slender yet looking straight ahead with poise.
The queen who demanded marriage instead of an affair
Henry VIII's encounter with Anne Boleyn began as an affair. Henry VIII was married to Catherine of Aragon (Catalina) and had a daughter, but he was already intimate with Mary Boleyn, Anne Boleyn's sister. Mary was also married. Smitten at first sight, the king asked Anne Boleyn to become his mistress, but Anne Boleyn insisted she would accept only a formal marriage.
For marriage, Henry VIII asked the papacy for a divorce. He argued that his marriage to Catherine, his first queen, was invalid because she had previously married his elder brother, Arthur Tudor, who died young. When the papacy refused, Henry VIII declared the separation of the Church of England. Anne Boleyn thus served as a catalyst in the birth of the Anglican Church.
Novelist and historian Karen Davies traced Anne Boleyn's appearance in life, which upended British history. Among the British royal collections is a drawing labeled "Anna Bollein Queen." Identified as RCIN (Royal Collection inventory number) 912189, the drawing is a portrait sketch left by Hans Holbein, Henry VIII's court painter. At the time, artists sketched in pencil or chalk on paper, then transferred it directly onto a panel to paint the portrait.
But the queen in the sketch did not match the records. Anne Boleyn was said to have a slender face and dark hair, yet the woman in the sketch was blonde and plump enough to show a double chin. While working cleaning jobs to fund her research, Davies was introduced by a client to Hassan Ugail, director of the Centre for Visual Computing at the University of Bradford. It was the moment AI converged with history.
Professor Ugail, together with Professor David Stork, an AI researcher at Stanford University, analyzed Holbein's other portrait sketches with AI. They converted key facial features—such as the distance between the eyes, the shape of the nose, the width of the lips and the jawline—into numbers for comparison. It is the same method used for facial recognition on smartphones and at airport immigration. The AI had already trained on 15 million human face photos.
AI reveals royal kinship ties
The researchers compared, with AI, Holbein's royal sitters and the Boleyn family images. The AI analysis raised the possibility that the sketch previously known as Anne Boleyn was actually her mother, Elizabeth Howard. Conversely, it also increased the likelihood that the unidentified sitter in RCIN 912190 was Anne Boleyn, the team said.
The unidentified sitter had dark hair and a slim figure, as records describe. The image also showed 76.9% similarity to a portrait of Elizabeth I at about age 13 by another court painter, William Scrots. Finally, it showed 75.5% similarity to another portrait of Anne Boleyn painted later in Elizabeth I's reign. With this triangular verification, the team said the unidentified sitter was likely Anne Boleyn. By the same method, they also suggested that the sitter in RCIN 912247, known as "Lady Bo," could be Anne's sister Mary.
The results were published in March in the international journal "npj Heritage Science." Of course, AI judgments cannot be said to be 100% correct. Some argued that because the AI's training data were photographs, it is difficult to apply them directly to artworks such as portraits. But the researchers said there is other evidence supporting the AI's determinations. For example, of Holbein's 81 portrait sketches, only 12 sitters' names are securely confirmed by contemporary sources. Even the name "Anne Boleyn" on a portrait may have been added arbitrarily by a later owner.
The fact that the analysis focused on sketches—the underdrawings—rather than finished portraits also added weight. While a finished portrait can be imbued with a different image later through clothing, jewelry and surrounding objects, a sketch, as an underdrawing, is better for comparing a sitter's facial structure in life. The team noted pinholes and fold lines on the sketches as signs that they were not made for aesthetic purposes but served as tools to transfer facial structure precisely onto the panel.
AI has been used before to interpret 16th-century paintings. In 2023, Professor Ugail analyzed Raphael's "de Brécy Tondo" with AI to support its authenticity. The painting, showing the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus, closely resembles the style of Raphael's 1512 masterpiece "Sistine Madonna," prompting claims in the Victorian era that it was a 19th-century copy of the original. But Professor Ugail said he used AI facial recognition to conclude the painting was by Raphael.
Why the queen in the portrait holds a rose
After Henry VIII's death, the English throne was held for six years by Edward VI, Elizabeth I's half brother, and for four years by Mary I, her half sister. They were born to Henry VIII's third queen and first queen, respectively. In the meantime, Elizabeth I was even treated as illegitimate. After enduring the humiliation, Elizabeth I ascended the throne in 1558, but her opponents still attacked by disparaging her mother, Anne Boleyn. A Catholic priest wrote, "Anne Boleyn had a sallow complexion as if jaundiced, a tooth that jutted beneath her upper lip, and six fingers on her right hand." She was treated as a witch.
After Anne Boleyn's beheading, Henry VIII erased all traces of her from the palace. Not a single lifetime portrait remained. Elizabeth I commissioned her mother's portrait to strike back at her rivals. It was a portrait of Anne Boleyn holding a rose in her right hand. The painting is part of the collection at Hever Castle, where Anne Boleyn spent her childhood. In Feb., Hever Castle and the Hamilton Kerr Institute at the University of Cambridge said Elizabeth I's intent to suppress her rivals was embedded in the rose portrait.
First, by examining the tree rings of the panel, they estimated the rose portrait dates to 1583, during Elizabeth I's reign. If so, the rose portrait can be seen as the earliest surviving work among Anne Boleyn's portraits. In particular, the team used X-ray imaging on the rose portrait and identified a triangular form under the right arm that shows the picture's original composition.
At the time, most royal portraits did not show the hands. The team said the triangle revealed by X-ray indicates that the rose portrait, too, was initially underdrawn in the conventional way, and later reconfigured so that both hands and the red rose would be clearly visible.
According to the researchers, Elizabeth I countered her rivals' agitation with a portrait that clearly showed her mother had five fingers on her right hand. In modern terms, it was portrait politics. British historian Helen Harrison described Hever Castle's rose portrait that way in her book "The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn," published last year, and the new scientific analysis provided material evidence supporting that interpretation.
Anne Boleyn was condemned in her time as a temptress who ruined the royal family, but in modern times she has been reassessed as a political scapegoat who resisted a patriarchal society and led England's Reformation. Recent TV dramas and films depict her that way. Anne Boleyn's face was thoroughly erased by the powers of her time, but the lines left in sketches and the underdrawing in the panel have brought her true character back before history. By revealing the reality of the portraits, science may have shown the power of truth that refuses to disappear, no matter how much power tries to conceal it.
References
npj Heritage Science (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s40494-026-02456-0
Hever Castle (2026), https://www.hevercastle.co.uk/news/secrets-beneath-hevers-rose-portrait/
A Raphael Madonna and Child Oil Painting (2024), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-72271-4_4
npj Heritage Science (2023), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-023-01094-0