Mystery sitter in Holbein portrait could be Anne Boleyn, AI analysis finds

Detail from Holbein's sketch of an unidentified woman, which it is claimed may depict Anne Boleyn. Detail from Holbein's sketch of an unidentified woman, which it is claimed may depict Anne Boleyn. They are two small sketches by the Renaissance master Hans Holbein: one has long been considered to be a portrait of Henry VIII's doomed second wife, Anne Boleyn, and the other is of an unknown woman whose name was lost to time. Now researchers using AI have discovered that the unnamed woman might be the tragic queen after all, while the other figure could in fact be Boleyn's mother. The works, which belong to the royal collection and are known as the Windsor sketch and the Unidentified Woman respectively, were analysed by a team at the University of Bradford, who found that they might have been incorrectly inscribed in the 1700s, leading to a misunderstanding that has lasted centuries.