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Wait, am I recording? You are listening to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. Alright, let's mango.

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Hello and welcome to Stuff About Things, an Art History Podcast. My name is Lindsay. Hi, and I am an art historian. And if you don't believe me, I've got a PhD diploma to prove it. It's not good for much else, but it does show my credentials, so we won't send it to Goodwill just yet. Thank you for joining me for this mini-sode, which I categorize as any episode under 30 minutes. This mini sode is tangentially related. Tangentially? Tangentially? Doesn't sound right. Anyway, it is related to episode 43, which covered the 1833 painting of the execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche. That episode was in part inspired by a trip that I recently took to the UK, where I saw that painting and a bunch of other stuff related to British and more specifically tutor history. While in the UK, I also consumed copious amounts of bad reality television and beer, but it's the bad reality television that is pertinent here because I was introduced by my cousin to the absolutely addictive garbage that is married at first sight. I started thinking more about those two things, tutor history and bad reality television, while working on episode 43. In that episode, I make a very off-handed brief comment about a portrait and its role in encouraging and allegedly destroying a marriage. And I thought, huh, could be interesting to talk about that. That's how we got here. To the part where I tell you stuff about a portrait that shows that being married at second sight isn't all that better than being married at first sight. The portrait of Anne of Cleves by Hans Holbein. He was nervous, and he had good reason for being so. The man for whom he worked had shown time and again that he was all too willing to let heads roll. The ambassador was joined in his travels by an artist, but not just any artist. The man was no less than the court painter to the king. The two had been tasked with a specific and incredibly important task: to obtain for their master the portraits of two sisters. The ambassador had been trying to do so for months, often at the cost of his own dignity. But to date, he had only been granted the barest glances at the young women. And even then they were clad in some of the ugliest dresses the ambassador had ever seen. And he had seen a lot. The ambassador had, of course, requested a better look, much to the consternation of the vice-chancellor, who was his go-between at the court. The vice-chancellor was both startled and offended by the ask, retorting with dripping sarcasm, What? Would you like to see them naked? The ambassador had the good sense to know that the vice-chancellor was kidding, if one could call it that. But if the ambassador's master had gotten his way, the honest answer would have been yes. Eventually the two parties came to an agreement. The young women would have their portraits painted by the king's favorite painter. They would have sat in front of the man for hours at a time, their emotions running as rampant as the artist's quick brush. The sisters knew exactly why the artist had come to court. Marriage negotiations had been ongoing for some time. Now it was simply a matter of which sister would be the bride. In late August, the artist arrived back at court, two portraits in tow. It was not a moment too soon. The king was waiting. As the king's eyes made a feast of the painted faces, his first reaction must have been one of sheer relief. The king was not the only one. When word finally reached the ambassador at the foreign court, he too must have slept well for the first time in ages, assured that the head resting against his pillow would remain firmly attached to his shoulders for the foreseeable future. There was no way of knowing, of course, that not everyone would be so lucky. In the next year, a head would indeed roll. But the only one losing his head at the moment was the king. By the time the marriage negotiations had reached their end, he had convinced himself in heart and spirit that he had finally found the one. And if there was one thing that King Henry VIII of England liked more than an execution, it was a wedding. Only time would reveal the cruel truth. The woman whose painted face had so pleased the king was neither the one nor the last. She was merely the fourth. The portrait of Anne of Cleves by Hans Holbein is one of the most infamous portraits in the history of art, because it was this portrait that convinced Henry VIII that he had finally found his fourth and hopefully final wife. Spoiler alert, she's not. Anne of Cleves, more like Anne of Catfish. I mean, come on, that's a pretty good line. But I also felt a little bit bad because it does not accurately reflect the situation. And so I thought to myself, I'm gonna keep the line in, but I also need to make this up to my girl, Anne of Cleves, who despite having died 467 years ago, deserves better. For those of you who don't know, catfishing is the act of deceiving someone about the way that you look. The purest example of this is using someone else's photo on your dating profile. A more everyday form of catfishing might include using photos of yourself, but ones that aren't very accurate about what you look like now, either because they are wildly outdated or heavily photoshopped. I'll say it at the top: the portrait of Anne of Cleves by Hans Holbein is probably not an example of catfishing, though Henry VIII might disagree. But hey, I don't really care about Henry VIII. I do care about justice for Anne of Cleves. So let's get into it. Anne of Cleves's claim to history fame is rather unfortunate. She was the fourth of Henry VIII's six wives. Anne of Cleves's predecessors included Catherine of Aragon, Aragon? I don't know. Who Henry completely discarded and may have poisoned, though that's questionable, Anne Boleyn, who got the old chop chop after various shenanigans, including, quote unquote, failing to give the king a son, and directly before Anne of Cleves, there was Jane Seymour, the only one of Henry's six wives who bore him the thing he wanted more than anything else: a son, future King Edward VI. Unfortunately, Jane died shortly after giving birth, leaving Henry absolutely bereft at her loss. But hey, a king got a king. And just two weeks after burying wife number three, Henry VIII was on the hunt for wife number four. It was ultimately good that Henry VIII got this process moving pronto, because it took him two years to eventually find someone who agreed to marry him. Part of the reason it took so long was because of how Henry VIII was conducting himself in these negotiations. For any other king in Europe, the prospect of political alliances was really the be-all and all of marriage considerations. But Henry VIII wanted to see his potential brides before he would propose marriage. While perfectly understandable by today's standards, I cannot over-emphasize just how bananas offensive it would have been for a king to basically say, I need to see the goods before I agree to buy the goods. Excuse me, what? To be fair, it was common for betrothed couples to exchange portraits, but in those situations the ink was already dry on the marriage contract. Pre-ink drying, it would have been incredibly offensive to ask for a portrait, because ultimately a woman's appearance was the least important thing, or one of the least important things, about her marriage ability. It was instead her quote-unquote breeding or bloodline that ultimately determined her eligibility. But Henry VIII was not going to chance it. Anne became a marriage target for Henry in late 1538 or early 1539, when negotiations with another potential bride fell through, much to Henry's disappointment. In the wake of that disappointment, Henry's closest advisor, Thomas Cromwell, encouraged the king to marry someone with close ties to the Schmalkaldic League, which is delightful to say. But it turns out this league didn't really have any eligible bachelorets, so they just looked next door to Cleves and said, close enough. Cleves had the good fortune of having two eligible bachelorets, in the form of Anne, who at the time was about 24, and her sister Amalia, who was a few years younger. But Henry VIII wanted to see the sisters before he committed to one or the other. Or I suppose either. And luckily for him, the persistence of his ambassadors at Cleves finally paid off, as in the summer of 1539, they got the green light to get portraits made of the two sisters for Henry to consult. Henry VIII is not going to entrust this very important task to just any old painter. No. He was going to send the best of the best, someone that he could trust to tell the truth with his brush. That painter was Hans Holbein. Hans Holbein, technically Hans Holbein the Younger, was one of the greatest painters of the 16th century, and he was an absolute rock star of the Northern Renaissance. Now I'm sure you've all heard of the Italian or the Southern Renaissance, but there was also a Renaissance happening north of the Alps that was at once distinct from, yet connected to the goings-on in Italy. Some of the big Northern Renaissance names that you might have heard of are people like Albrecht Durr, Jan van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch, the Bruegels, and of course, the Holbeines. Over time, Holbein became very well known for his portraits, which is to say paintings of people that he did from life. So he saw someone and then he painted them. Holbein had this talent for not just painting people as they were, without majorly idealizing them, but also capturing something of their personalities, which was a very tricky thing to do. In his late 20s, Holbein took his talents on the road to England, and within a few years he became very well acquainted with people in the inner circle of King Henry VIII. And in time, he earned the very prestigious title of painter to the king. When Henry VIII needed someone to go paint portraits of potential wifey number four, Holbein was his guy. Holbein's portrait of Anne measures in at approximately two and a quarter by one and a half feet, which I would judge to be about one-third life's size. Holbein painted the portrait using oil and tempera paints on parchment, the same material used for the pages of illuminated manuscripts. For more on that, see Mini Sode 3. The main reason that Holbein likely chose parchment as his support, as opposed to say something like canvas or wood, was simply due to logistics. When you are schlepping a portrait 400 miles over land and sea, you want it to be as light as possible. As for what the portrait looks like, Holbein paints Anne straight on from the hip up. That is not a purely stylistic choice. Henry VIII wanted to know about the figure of his potential future wife. Anne's figure is quite evident, given that her waist is incredibly cinched by a golden belt. Her waist seems even tinier in contrast with the rest of her dress, a rather voluminous rusty orange velvet number with gold accents, all of which positively pops against a solid blue background. Complimentary colors for the win. The other thing that's poppin' in the portrait of Anne is her jewelry and accessories, particularly her headdress. It's a cap-like thing with a kind of Princess Leia earmuffy vibe, and it is absolutely encrusted with pearls and gemstones. In fact, one of my favorite details in the portrait is on the right side of the headdress, where if you look really closely, you can see two little figures of a man and a woman that appear to have been made out of something like enamel. Anne is also wearing several necklaces, including a bejeweled choker with an emerald cross, in addition to at least five very fancy-looking rings, including a thumb ring. As for Anne's face, um it's fairly unremarkable, honestly. She has dark, almond-shaped eyes, pale skin, a maybe slightly larger than average nose, a point will return to, and what I would call a fairly average-looking mouth, though I do appreciate the tiny beauty mark near the edge of her lips. I find it really hard to describe faces, so I was thinking of who I might cast as Anne of Cleves in a movie, and I can't really think of anyone. Whoever did the casting for the Showtime series, The Tutors, however, went off their damn rocker when they cast singer Joss Stone as Anne. For those of you who are a little too young, Joss Stone at the time was one of the most beautiful women in the whole damn world. But for real, are you joking? The person who is allegedly one of Henry VIII's ugliest wives, you're going to cast Joss Stone. Huh? Although to be fair, to be fair, they did put her in a ridiculous headdress in a few scenes, and even she struggled to pull that thing off, which is saying something. But let's get back to the real Anne. So we know Anne of Cleves sat for this portrait, meaning she was there in front of Hans Holbein while he painted or drew her. I include Drew there, uh, because there's probably no way that Holbein completed two paintings with this level of detail in the single week he was in Cleves. It's likely that he spent time making detailed sketches and then finished the portraits on his way back to England. I am slightly lost on the logistics of completing a painting while traveling 400 miles back to your murdery boss, but hey, Holbein was a professional and he seems to have managed just fine. He arrives back to England with the portraits in tow in late August or early September of 1539, and you best bet that Henry VIII was waiting. Unfortunately, we have no idea what Henry thought of the portrait of Anne, but his reaction must have been favorable because he determined that he would indeed marry Anne. And within a few weeks, she's on her way to England, to her future husband, and her happily ever after. Ugh, girl, I got some bad news for you. Henry was so impatient to meet Anne that he decides to surprise her earlier than expected. He makes the baffling choice to do this in disguise, the idea being that Anne will recognize him regardless of what he's wearing because he's her one true love. Uh, that might seem delusional, and it was, but these kinds of ideas were very prevalent in the chivalric, or knightly, that's knightly with a K, knightly romances that were deeply rooted in English traditions. Even at 48 years old, Henry was a sucker for these kinds of ideas, much to his detriment. Anne not only does not recognize him, but when he tries to kiss her, she pushes him away. Because Newsflash, that's what you do when a strange man in a cloak tries to fondle you. Trust me on that one. But rationality does not negate the fact that Henry was absolutely humiliated by this interaction. For Henry and Anne, it is not an exaggeration to say that their relationship is doomed from the literal first time that they meet. This is all complicated by the fact that Anne doesn't speak English and shares zero cultural references with her husband. Henry was not one to admit or maybe even recognize the root cause of issues, which in this case seems to be deeply wounded male pride. It's far easier for him to simply blame Anne and say that she wasn't what he was expecting appearance-wise. She's not as pretty as he thought, she's older than he expected. I mean, he goes so far as to call her a Flanders mare. That's right, he likens his future wife to a horse, which is not nice. All of this is what contributes to the idea that not only was Anne of Cleves the least attractive of Henry VIII's wives, but that her appearance was the primary reason their marriage failed. That is a gross oversimplification of this whole thing, and it's one to which we shall return. For now, though, let's finish the historical context and address how Anne is also considered one of Henry's luckiest wives. Things get worse for Anne before they get better, starting with her marriage to Henry, which, despite all of Henry's attempts to get out of, goes forward, and it is the complete and utter disaster that you'd expect. The relationship between the couple is so bad, and Henry so repulsed by Anne, that they fail to consummate the marriage even after months of trying. Everyone at court knows this marriage is not going well, but to be fair to him, Henry, while raging behind the scenes, never seems to have been particularly cruel or disrespectful to Anne in public. Until a little birdie by the name of Catherine Howard catches Henry's eye. Catherine was a lady in waiting to Anne, and her family was essentially dangling this 18-year-old in front of Henry like something shiny in front of a raccoon, which proved to be an incredibly effective tactic. Now, this episode of Tudor History is way more complex than I give it credit for here, but suffice it to say, Anne of Cleves was not an idiot. She likely had some idea of what was going on, given that her husband sent her away from court four months into their marriage. That said, it was still a terrible surprise when an advisor showed up one night and was like, Your husband wants an annulment. She did not take this news well at all. At least not at first. There's three major things at play here. One, she took an oath before God to be this man's wife until death do them parts, and she took that very seriously. However, that leads us to two. Henry VIII had ways to ensure that death came sooner rather than later. Finally, three. Anne was terrified about the prospect of returning to Cleves, where she would forever be an embarrassment and a burden to her family. That is a lot of stuff to think about, but like I said, Anne was not stupid. She knew that survival meant giving Henry what he wanted, and so she agreed to go along with the annulment. Henry, for his part, was so relieved at how easy this all was that he ended up treating Anne really well in the aftermath of their annulment. Henry not only welcomed Anne to stay. In England, but he even gave her properties and an income on which she could rely. He also bestowed upon her the honorific title of the king's beloved sister. While a bit of a weird, uh a weird thing to call the woman with whom you tried and failed to have marital relations, the title shows the esteem and appreciation that Henry had for Anne, who he treated like an extended member of his family. Anne even spent the occasional holiday at court and became quite close with Henry's daughters Mary and Elizabeth. That is to say, Anne did just fine. One person who was not fine was Thomas Cromwell, the man who had machinated Henry's marriage to Anne, who paid for that and other sins with his head. He was joined a couple of years later by Catherine Howard, whose marriage to the king did not go well. Anne of Cleves watched their marriage unravel from afar, and she was reminded yet again of what might have happened if she had fought Henry's wishes. Anne would go on to outlive not just Henry VIII, but his sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr, by about a decade. After Henry's death, things did get a little less comfortable for Anne, who, now that the king was dead, was what one author referred to as, quote, an expensive irrelevance, end quote. But ultimately she was inoffensive enough to live out her days in relative comfort and obscurity. When Anne's health declined in 1557, Mary even allowed her to live at a royal manor, which is where Anne spent the final weeks of her life before succumbing to an illness, potentially cancer, in July of 1557. She was just 42 years old. Anne is the only one of Henry VIII's six wives to be buried in Westminster Abbey, the traditional final resting place of England's royalty. Only a fraction of her tomb is visible to the public, a simple expanse of rust-colored stone sandwiched between two much grander monuments. The stone bears a simple epitaph in gold letters. Anne of Cleves, Queen of England, born 1515, died 1557. The words are not original, but were instead added to the monument in the early 1970s, ensuring Henry VIII's fourth wife got at least some of the recognition she deserved for living to tell the tale. It would be easy to assume that this stone is just a plaque, a fittingly inconsequential burial marker for an inconsequential queen. There is more to this structure, however, than meets the eye. The quote unquote plaque is just part of Anne's tomb monument, around which other monuments have been built, making the majority of Anne's tomb inaccessible to the public. Those who are lucky enough to get near it, however, will see that it's a low-sitting stone structure covered in low-relief carvings, including one of Anne's emblem, an intertwined A and C topped by a crown. The crown itself is likely not a reference to Anne's queendom, given that she was never formally crowned, and ultimately her marriage to the king annulled. It is instead a symbol of the Duchy of Cleves, the home to which Anne never returned after leaving in 1539. A journey that she probably never would have made had Hans Holbein not painted her portrait. It is to that portrait that we now return. Specifically the question of its accuracy. Was it a catfish, as so many have claimed? The simple and most likely answer is no. The few firsthand accounts we have state that the portrait was a good likeness of Anne. To boot, Hans Holbein was an extremely talented painter who was best known for his portraits. Sure, he might have engaged in a little Renaissance face tuning, if you will, but Holbein was not about to gamble his life by producing an overly idealized portrait of Anne. We do have other portraits that are said to be of Anne of Cleves, but we don't know a lot about them, including whether they were done from life and how accurate they are. They're also a very different portraiture style than the one that Holbein had. In his portraits, people actually look like people. In some of these other portraits, realism is not necessarily what they're going for. That said, Holbein's portrait of Anne probably did flatter her, though not nearly as much as some have suggested. Historian Elizabeth Norton, who wrote a great biography of Anne of Cleves, mentions another portrait of Anne, though in X-rayed revealed an earlier draft that showed Anne in profile, including a nose that was longer and larger than what one might consider conventionally attractive. Such a feature is not as apparent when someone is straight on, which is how Holbein chose to paint Anne. Norton, however, also reminds us that we have accounts of what people from the 1530s and 40s thought of Anne's appearance, and none of them mention an unseemly nose or anything else. The most critical description of Anne is from a French ambassador, who described the newly arrived Anne as a bit older and less beautiful than anyone expected. The French ambassador also gives the most backhanded of backhanded compliments to Anne when describing her traveling companions from Cleves, who he calls, quote, inferior in beauty even to their mistress. End quote. But that's really the worst account that we get. All of the other ones are either complimentary or maybe lukewarm. The clearest indication that we have that Holbein's portrait is not a catfish is the fact that Henry VIII never punished Holbein, who retained the title of the king's painter until his sudden death in November of 1543, less than three years after painting the portrait of Anne. In conclusion, it is clear from the historical record that Holbein's portrait of Anne of Cleves was a perfectly fine Renaissance portrait, one that captured a true yet flattering likeness of its sitter. In the lore of Henry VIII and his six wives, Anne of Cleves is often the butt of the joke. The wife that even Henry VIII could not bring himself to lust, much less love. But it was Anne of Cleves who got the last laugh. Born the daughter of a minor duke, she rose through the ranks to become the Queen of England. Yes, her tenure might have been short, but at least her head stayed attached to her neck. Two of Henry's other wives couldn't say the same. As for her portrait, it's unclear how Holbein's portrayal of Anne survived when so many other portraits from Tudor times have faded from existence. The first reference we have to the portrait's ownership post-Henry VIII is when it was in the collection of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, in the early 1600s. After changing hands a few times, the portrait ended up in a private collection in Paris, where it was purchased by none other than King Louis XIV. We don't know what attracted Louis or his representatives to purchase the portrait of an English queen, but it was likely a combination of the painting's royal history and the fact that it was painted by Holbein, whose reputation only grew in the centuries following his death. In 1793, the portrait of Anne became the property of the French state and was transferred to the newly formed Louvre Museum, which opened on August 10th of the same year. Much like Henry VIII's reaction in 1539, it's unclear how the French public regarded Holbein's beautifully painted portrait of the woman who Henry VIII so despised as his wife, but cherished as his quote-unquote sister. History, however, had not yet tired of separating queens' heads from their bodies. Just two months after the portrait of Anne of Cleves debuted in the galleries of the Louvre, Marie Antoinette climbed the scaffold and presented herself for death before a rabid crowd braying for her blood. The event cut a sharp contrast to the executions of even the most controversial of Henry VIII's queens. The King of England had afforded Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard the dignity of private executions, a fate that might have befallen Anne of Cleves too, had she not proven receptive to the king's demand for an annulment. For all their hatred of Marie Antoinette, however, we know that those visiting the Louvre proved sympathetic to another executed queen just four decades later, when Paul Delaroche's execution of Lady Jane Grey premiered in the 1834 salon. But for more on that, you'll have to see Episode 43. That is all I have for you today on the Portrait of Anne of Cleves by Hans Holbein. I have no idea how long this episode is going to be, but I'm guessing it's over 30 minutes. So I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap this up quickly. You can find all of the sources I use to write this episode, as well as images related to it, on the podcast's website, stuff about thingspodcast.com. If you liked this mini sode and have two minutes to spare, I would so appreciate it if you left the podcast a review wherever you listen. The usual thanks go out to hooksounds.com and freemusicarchive.org for the royalty free music featured in the episode. The first song is a version of Box Brandenburg Concerto No. In the weeks that followed.

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Who is calling me? This is Rude. Rude. Goodbye.