I've written about this over at The Anne Boleyn Files but thought I'd alert you to this news if you haven't already seen it.
The newspapers are all reporting today on Professor Amit Roy-Chowdhury's work using his facial recognition programme to compare the 1534 Moost Happi medal (the only contemporary image we have of Anne Boleyn) with various portraits of her. The programme failed to find a match with some portraits, including one from Hever Castle in Kent and another held at the National Portrait Gallery in London", but it found that the medal was a close match to the Nidd Hall portrait.
However, we cannot say that this portrait is definitely of Anne Boleyn. Professor Roy-Chowdhury did say: "What the computer provides at the end is another source of evidence into the discussions that have been going on about these questions. It should not be construed that the computer knows the answer." But it means that we should not dismiss this portrait and I'd love for further work to be done on this, perhaps also looking at the Holbein sketches.
Stonecarver Lucy Churchill did an amazing job at replicating the 1534 medal and 'filling in' the parts that had been damaged. You can read about her research and how she went about replicating it at The Reconstruction of the Moost Happi Medal.
Here are links to newspaper articles about this news:
- Possible Anne Boleyn portrait found using facial recognition software, The Guardian.
- Portraits of Anne Boleyn may not be her, say experts, The Telegraph
- Scientists use old portrait and CCTV technology to identify the face of Anne Boleyn
I have emailed Professor Roy-Chowdhury about his findings so I'll let you know if I find out any more.
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