Using artificial intelligence, researchers may have identified the previously unknown subject of a sketch by Northern Renaissance artist Hans Holbein, and reidentified the sitter for a related Holbein drawing. The study, carried out by Karen L. Davies and Hassan Ugail, was published in the journal npj Heritage Science.
Holbein was born in Germany but moved to England to escape the European Reformation, initially under the patronage of Oliver Cromwell and Henry VIII’s ill-fated second wife, Anne Boleyn. He worked as a portraitist in the Tudor court starting around 1526 until his death in 1543.
Both of the artworks in question—known as Anne Boleyn and An unidentified woman—are part of the Royal Collection Trust, which owns some 85 drawings by Holbein. Only 30 of these drawings, the study points out, are related to paintings whose subjects are clearly identified.
Until now, this left historians to rely on inscriptions from 18th-century copies of Holbein originals to identify the drawings’ sitters. Davies and Ugail, however, used computational facial recognition to suggest that the “unidentified woman” is in fact Boleyn, whereas the portrait said to be of Boleyn is in fact a drawing of her mother, Elizabeth Howard.
Davies is an independent historian and novelist. She approached Ugail, a computer science professor at the University of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England, to work with her on the project. Ugail was in the news several years ago for his controversial claim that Raphael had painted a work whose attribution had long been contested.
The profile portrait of Boleyn, their study notes, does not match “contemporary eyewitness descriptions.” Here she has blond hair, a “substantial” build, and a double chin, whereas diplomatic reports and court records of the day describe her as being slender with dark hair and a “little neck”—exactly the look of the figure in the “unidentified woman” portrait.
To address this discrepancy, Hassan “looked at the entire collection [of Holbein drawings] and compared one image against another to create a huge matrix,” he told The Guardian. “It clustered paintings that were close to each other,” which led the researchers to their conclusion. Davies, for her part, was clear that she didn’t intend to make any definitive statement—yet. “I hope that there’s a debate about reassessment more widely,” she told The Guardian.
In a description of the portrait of Boleyn, the Royal Collection Trust acknowledges the doubt surrounding their identification of the sitter, and notes that it is based on a later inscription. However, in defense of that identification, it also points out that the nightgown worn by the subject is similar to one given to Boleyn by Henry and that abrasion has removed some of the pigment from her hair, possibly making it appear lighter than it would have originally.
