The 'boring' one

    I went to the Louvre last week and, faced with its daunting collection of art and people, I decided to concentrate on Northern European Painting which I've always found calming. I discovered there Hans Holbein's painting of Anne of Cleves, and, since nobody now seems to mind photographs being taken, here it is.

    I've always been fascinated by this painting, and in the flesh it's magnificent, she is presented as so calm, so symetrical, so pleasing, more like a doll than a person, that I don't wonder why Henry VIII chose her of the two sisters he sent Holbein to paint.
    But she's the wife that no one talks about. Possibly that's because she's the most boring, but well, in comparison to Anne Boleyn, they all seem so. And frankly, considering how capricious Henry was, she must have been glad to be boring, and perhaps it's why she survived. In fact, she survived him by the longest time, she was given lands and property after their divorce, and was considered, after his daughters and subsequent wives, to be the most pre-eminent of women. She became his friend, and was referred to as "the King's Beloved Sister".
    I think she was probably a shrewd person, cleverer than she was loud. She managed to get the best from the situation into which she was forced, and, although probably, by means of being called 'sister' she was still under Henry's protection, and therefore control, she achieved an independent position, virtually unknown for women at the time.
    Looking at it, I thought Henry must have fallen in love with the painting rather than the woman, she is so wonderfully framed in it, so decorated, that she, the person, can't be real. I don't think any woman could have lived up to Holbein's vision.
    Famously Henry called her 'the Flanders mare'. It's a bit cruel, but then men have always insulted women via their appearance, and that's quite mild treatment from Henry VIII. Additionally to the changed political panorama that meant their marriage was no longer so advantageous, apparently she wasn't cultivated enough for him; she had no formal education, she wasn't witty; the total opposite to her beheaded namesake. No wonder Cromwell liked her and Henry didn't.

    I suppose, if I were to be truthful about why I really like this painting, then it's because it's a masterful execution of marketing; a magnificent lie. It supported the claims of Cromwell, et al, to the King so well that it persuaded the King to marry, an enormous undertaking, and then, when his lack of attraction to her became infamous, it became renowned for being an example of portrait painting distorting the truth.

    This is a miniature of Anne, perhaps painted by Holbein as well, in it she seems more real, even sparkier, but still with those half-lidded eyes, calmly level headed and patient. The perfect queen, if only Henry had realised it.