Portrait of Anne Boleyn Was Meant to Rebut Rumors That She Was a Witch, Historians Say

A portrait of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s ill-fated second wife, is now thought to be an attempt to rehabilitate her image after her death. Using infrared reflectography, historians and curators have uncovered evidence that the work was at least partially created to dispel rumors that Boleyn was a witch with six fingers.

In the painting, which hangs in Hever Castle in England, both of Boleyn’s hands, each with the usual number of digits, are visible. But the new infrared scans reveal that the underdrawing for the portrait didn’t show her hands at all, suggesting that the work’s unknown maker deviated from the drawing to include them.

Sixteenth-century portraits, especially those of royalty, were often based on “patterns”—sketches made from life during brief sittings. Not only were these used by the artist who made the original sketch, copies of this “official” likeness were circulated to other studios and workshops to ensure a consistent image of the sitter.  

The Hever portrait may have been made from one such copy, but at a later time. Tree-ring analysis of the painting’s oak support dates it to about 1583—during the reign of Boleyn’s daughter, Elizabeth I. It is now thought to be the earliest extant likeness of Boleyn and, based as it might have been on an original “pattern,” perhaps the most accurate.

Henry VIII divorced his first wife, Catharine of Aragon, to marry Boleyn, leading to his eventual excommunication from the Catholic church and bringing about the English Reformation. But when Anne failed to provide him with a son, she was charged with treason and beheaded in 1536. Henry subsequently destroyed all traces of her in the royal residences, including any portraits made of her during her lifetime.

After Elizabeth 1 ascended to the throne in 1558, Nicholas Sanders, an activist who campaigned for the restoration of Roman Catholicism to England, sought to undermine her legitimacy by writing that her mother was “unnatural,” and had had “on her right hand six fingers.” The painting appears to have been a direct rebuttal.

“It’s Elizabeth’s way of not only reclaiming her own legitimacy and lineage, but also restoring the legitimacy of her mother,” Kate McCaffrey, an assistant curator at Hever, told the Guardian. “It’s impossible to say that Elizabeth herself commissioned this portrait, but it certainly seems too much of a coincidence for it not to be in response to rumors that were circulating at this time.”

The painting will be featured in the exhibition “Capturing a Queen: The Image of Anne Boleyn,” which opens in February 2027 at Hever Castle and Gardens.