THE rare and newly acquired portrait of Catherine Howard was unveiled by David Starkey on 3rd March 2008 completing Hever Castle’s collection of
Henry VIII’s Queens.
Catherine Howard (1521-1542), Henry VIII’s fifth wife, married the King in 1540 almost immediately after his divorce from Anne of Cleves was finalised. However, after humiliating the King with her infidelity, Catherine was charged with treason and executed on 13th February 1542
The portrait has been surrounded in controversy as it has proved hard to identify, with previous debate naming the sitter as Mary Tudor or Elizabeth Seymour. This arose because not only was Catherine Howard’s marriage to Henry, and time at Court short lived, making the window for portrait sitting small, but she was, as the daughter of a younger brother of a Duke, one of the many obscure and relatively poor aristocracy of whom family portraits in youth may well have been unlikely
Now, it is agreed that the portrait is indeed Catherine Howard, firstly because of the clothes and jewellery – Henry VIII is known to have inundated Catherine with such gifts in his attempts to please her – and secondly because it bears a striking similarity in face shape and features to that of a miniature in the Royal Collection.
The portrait of Catherine Howard will sit next to a portrait of Anne Boleyn and her lesser known sister Mary, as part of the ‘Losing your head over Henry’ Exhibition in Hever Castle’s Long Gallery. The exhibition explores the relationship between the Boleyn and Howard families, both fiercely ambitious for their daughters to become Queen of England and both eventually disgraced, as Anne and Catherine were beheaded.
The event and exhibition also tie in with the release of ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ based on the book of the same name by Philippa Gregory. Philippa has contributed to the exhibition, writing about the portraits – and she is particularly excited about the inclusion of the rare portrait of Mary Boleyn, the heroine of her novel.
Hever Castle is best known as the family home of Anne Boleyn, but is also where it is believed Henry VIII first met and then courted Anne and now boasts one of the best collections of Tudor portraits after the National Portrait Gallery.
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