A Witch?

Anne Boleyn (from a portrait at Hatfield House)

 

Happy Halloween! 

 So was Anne Boleyn a witch? Find out at: 

https://www.academia.edu/36850156/Anne_of_the_Wicked_Ways_Perceptions_of_Anne_Boleyn_as_a_Witch_in_History_and_in_Popular_Culture

 

Henry VIII - Before and After

 His suits of armour from 1527 and from 1544.

From The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 

 

 

 

The Beauforts

 

The latest issue of 'Tudor Life' is out, with 'The Beauforts' as its theme.
 
 It's about 90 pages long, and includes my article Elizabeth - The Golden Age.
 
Check out a sample copy here: https://www.tudorsociety.com/tudor-life-november-2020-taster/
 
To learn more about 'The Tudor Society': www.tudorsociety.com

 

Anne of Cleves in 1528

 A portrait of Anne of Cleves as a girl.

She appears on the right side panel with her mother Mary of Jülich-Berg. Anne is on at the far left and she faces the viewer. Her sister Amelia is in the center. Her father and brother are on the opposite panel.

From a triptych showing John Duke of Cleves at Worship with His Family and His Court, 1528 (by an Unknown Artist).

 

 

The Frog Prince

 

Francis, Duke of Alençon, the French Prince, who came to England to woo Queen Elizabeth. 

She was fond of him and called him her 'Frog', but she eventually didn't marry him.

When he left finally left her court, Elizabeth wrote a poem entitled On Monsieur's Departure:

 

I grieve and dare not show my discontent;
I love, and yet am forced to seem to hate;
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant;
I seem stark mute, but inwardly do prate.
I am, and not; I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun --
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands, and lies by me, doth what I have done;
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be suppressed.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, Love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low;
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die, and so forget what love e'er meant.

 

When Francis died in 1584, Elizabeth wrote to his mother Catherine de Medici saying:

‘Your sorrow cannot exceed mine, although you are his mother. You have several other children, but for myself I find no consolation, if it be not death, in which I hope we shall be reunited'.

 

 

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto's 'Anne Boleyn'

 

 

Anne Boleyn at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London. Photograph by Hiroshi Sugimoto.

The photo was part of a series called Portraits done in 1999:

https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/sugimoto-portraits-3 

https://www.sugimotohiroshi.com/new-page-50

One of the Anne Boleyn photos sold for £97,250 (about $125,816 USD) at auction in 2008 at Christie's in London:

https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/hiroshi-sugimoto-b-1948-anne-boleyn-5128288-details.aspx

 

A Love Song for Anne Boleyn

"Where are you going to, Fraggle, my son?

Where are you going to, my handsome young one?

"I'm going a-courting, Mother.

"I'm going a-courting, Mother..."

 

Henry VIII's love song to Anne Boleyn in the film 'A Man For All Seasons' (1966)

 

 Robert Shaw as Henry VIII and Vanessa Redgrave as Anne Boleyn

 

 

'Mary Queen of Scots' (1971)

 Although Elizabeth and Mary never actually met, fictionalized meetings between them have become a must in the movies.

Mary Queen of Scots (1971)

Lucy Churchill's Anne Boleyn 'The Most Happy' Medal

 

Lucy's reconstruction of the 1534 medal

 

 As many of you on 'Team Anne Boleyn' know, a few years ago talented sculptor Lucy Churchill did a wonderful reconstruction of Queen Anne's 1534 medal:

https://lucychurchill.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/the-moost-happi-portrait-of-anne-boleyn-a-rec/

They were also available as smaller pendants, and now Lucy has made them into magnets.

They are 38 mm in diameter, the same as the original medal, now in the British Museum.

I have both the plaque and the sterling silver pendant, and am looking forward to the new one in my mailbox!

Check out this video of Lucy's, which also has information on how to get them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta6t5UdEQ28 

Very highly recommended!