Katherine Howard: A New History (17 page)

In view of Katherine’s inventory, it has subsequently been theorised that the sitter must be the queen. However, there are noteworthy issues, namely the sitter’s age and her appearance. According to the French ambassador, who met Katherine in the autumn of 1540, the new queen was ‘small and slender’, even ‘very diminutive’, whereas Holbein’s sitter appears to have been bulkier in build. Katherine’s beauty was also consistently remarked upon, with the court observer William Thomas, for example, describing her as ‘a very beautiful gentlewoman’.
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George Cavendish also repeated Katherine’s ‘beawtie’ in his
Metrical Visions
.
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Holbein’s sitter wears a matronly, serious expression, and appears worn and tired, which must further call into question whether the sitter actually is the ‘beautiful’ Katherine. Although the lavish costume and expensive jewellery certainly indicate that the sitter was extremely well-born, probably royal, and definitively rules out Elizabeth Cromwell, it may not necessarily represent Queen Katherine. If the portrait dates from the late 1530s rather than the early 1540s, it is possible that it depicts a different royal woman, for during this period there were four other royal women at Henry VIII’s court, all of whom could have been the sitter in this portrait. These women were Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and aged twenty in 1536-7, Lady Margaret Douglas, niece of Henry VIII and aged twenty in 1535-6, Frances Brandon, niece of Henry VIII and aged twenty in 1537-8, and her younger sister Eleanor, aged twenty in 1539-40. It is noteworthy that Holbein’s portrait was originally identified as a portrait of Eleanor Brandon, Countess of Cumberland, and later as Mary Tudor.
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It is also interesting that the portrait was found in the collection of the Cromwell family.
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Although Katherine herself may not personally have played a prominent role in Thomas Cromwell’s downfall, it would have been extraordinary for the Cromwell family to have owned a portrait of the woman associated most closely with his downfall and execution, particularly in terms of her Catholic beliefs, which would have been unacceptable by the reformist Cromwell family. If one takes this further, not only may the sitter have had some connection with the Cromwells, but her religious beliefs were surely Protestant, for Thomas Cromwell was associated with the suppression of Catholicism within England and, thus, it is highly unlikely that his family would have retained a portrait of a Catholic sitter, at a time of violent conflict between Catholics and Protestants. If this thinking is correct, then Katherine Howard must be completely ruled out as the sitter in view of several points: her age, her religious beliefs, her appearance and the dating of the portrait.

It is likely that this portrait was painted between 1535 and 1540. At that particular point the fortunes of Princess Mary were singularly random, for while she had been in disgrace during Anne Boleyn’s period as queen, she had later been restored to her father’s favour during his marriage to Jane Seymour and later to Anne of Cleves. Because she spent much greater time at court in 1536-7, it is possible that Mary might have been the sitter in Holbein’s portrait. However, the sitter’s features do not square with what is known of Mary’s appearance, whose portraits evidence much paler skin, grey eyes, compressed lips, a high forehead, golden hair and a delicate frame.
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Her Catholic faith and her uneasy relationship with Thomas Cromwell also call into doubt her likelihood as the sitter. More possibly the sitter could be Margaret Douglas, niece of Henry VIII and later Countess of Lennox. Reported in 1534 to be ‘beautiful and highly esteemed’, the king’s niece is believed to have had ‘heavy-lidded, deep-set eyes, a long nose, broad jaw, and fairly thin lips’, features evident in Holbein’s portrait.
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Aged twenty in 1535-6, she enjoyed good relations with Queen Anne Boleyn and became engaged to Thomas Howard, uncle of the queen, in the spring of 1536. However, the king was furious when he learned of his niece’s engagement, and imprisoned both Howard (in the Tower of London) and Margaret, who was only released on 29 October 1537. It is intriguing, in light of this discussion, that Margaret reputedly offered Howard a miniature portrait of herself during their courtship. She also appears to have enjoyed a courteous relationship with Cromwell, for she referred to herself as ‘her that has her trust in you’ in a letter of June 1537, written to him in which she abandoned Howard. She promised to ‘pray our Lord to preserve you both soul and body’.
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However, the issue of her Roman Catholic faith must call into question whether the Cromwells would have owned a portrait of a Catholic royal noblewoman, although it is possible, since she was the grandmother of the Protestant King James I of England, that she was associated with the Protestant cause. Alternatively, the portrait may represent one of the Brandon sisters, who were prominent at court in the late 1530s. In Frances’s case, her status as mother of the Protestant queen Lady Jane Grey might have made an image of her an attractive gift for the Cromwell family.

It is therefore extremely unlikely that Holbein’s portrait of this young woman aged in her twenty-first year depicts Katherine Howard, for although the luxurious jewellery could support her candidacy as the sitter, it should be taken into account that other royal noblewomen, including the king’s daughters and nieces, were able to wear expensive items of jewellery, making it more likely that the sitter is one of three of Henry VIII’s nieces: Margaret Douglas, Frances Brandon, or her sister Eleanor.

More conventionally, a miniature by Holbein in the Royal Collection at Windsor (see Figure 6) has usually been identified as a portrait of Queen Katherine, perhaps during her first winter as queen. A second version exists in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch. Starkey confidently asserts that, on the basis of the sitter’s jewellery and costume, ‘[...] the picture is of her [Katherine]. It can even be dated as a wedding portrait.’
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By the mid nineteenth-century, the sitter had been identified as Henry’s fifth queen but had probably not been viewed as such before the eighteenth century. Painted watercolour on vellum, the portrait measures 6.3cm in height. The earliest reference to the portrait miniature in the Royal Collection dates from the Restoration of 1660-1, when it may have been identified as ‘a small peice Inclineing of a woman after ye Dresse of Henry ye Eightes wife by Peter Oliver’. The version owned by Buccleuch can be traced back to Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, in whose collection it was engraved by Wenceslaus Hollar as unnamed. Yet in neither case was Katherine Howard identified as the portrait’s sitter. The fact that the portrait in the Buccleuch Collection was owned by Thomas Howard, a descendant of Queen Katherine, could lend support to the fact that the sitter was a Howard and, probably, the queen herself.

However, as with Holbein’s portrait of a woman in her twenty-first year formally identified as Katherine Howard, there is no conclusive evidence that Katherine is indeed the sitter, despite Starkey’s interpretation. Although the sitter’s jewellery indicates a regal status by virtue of the fact that the large ruby, emerald and pearl jewel which she wears appears to be the same as that worn by Jane Seymour in her portrait painted by Holbein, this does not necessarily prove that the sitter is a fellow queen. For one thing, Queen Jane is known to have made gifts of jewellery to her ladies-in-waiting, including Mary, Lady Monteagle (c1510-40/4), who some have suggested is a possible candidate for the miniature under discussion because of the sitter’s resemblance with authenticated portraits of Mary. More possibly, the sitter is actually Lady Margaret Douglas. Viewed ‘as an important prize on the international marriage market’, Lady Margaret was involved in the autumn of 1538 in a series of prospective marriage alliances proposed by her uncle the king to Emperor Charles V, in an attempt to secure the emperor’s friendship against Francis I of France. Reported to be ‘beautiful and esteemed’, the features of the sitter in the miniature are strikingly similar to those of a portrait of Margaret as countess of Lennox (c. 1572).
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The sitter’s costume indicates that the portrait was painted in the autumn or winter; interestingly, Margaret may have sat for this miniature in October 1538 during negotiations for a European marriage alliance. Moreover, Queen Jane herself had made gifts of jewellery to Margaret, explaining why that lady may have worn the queen’s own jewels in a portrait miniature. In Greek, ‘margarite’ or Margaret can be translated as ‘pearl’.
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Other external evidence more convincingly suggests that the sitter is Margaret Douglas rather than Katherine Howard. While the portrait was originally owned by the Howards, as the earls of Arundel, it is unlikely that this family would have retained a portrait of their notorious ancestress for in the wake of her execution, as with Anne Boleyn, they hastily dissociated themselves from Katherine and almost certainly destroyed any images of the queen which they had once owned. The Duke of Norfolk was to remember his nieces as ‘ungrateful’ and declared that Katherine should be burnt at the stake, making it seemingly unlikely that his relatives would have desired to continue housing portraits of Katherine; particularly since several Howards had been imprisoned and harshly punished on her account. By contrast, a portrait of Margaret may have been a more desirable gift to own. There is extant evidence to clearly show her good relations and intimacy with the Howard family, particularly in her love affairs with Thomas and Charles Howard. Margaret’s relationships with two Howard men, her closeness to the English throne and her beauty and charm would have made a portrait of her a worthy possession of any noble English family. Most conclusively, this can be demonstrated by her later relationship as grandmother of King James I. In terms of physical appearance, the sitter in the portrait miniature bears little resemblance to what we know of Katherine, who was reported to be ‘slender’ rather than plump. The queen’s hair may also have been golden in colour, rather than auburn, if the figure of the Queen of Sheba in the window of King’s College Chapel at Cambridge can be viewed as a likeness of Katherine.
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Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a portrait also painted by Hans Holbein that possibly depicts Queen Katherine (see Figure 7). Dating from c. 1540-45, the portrait was painted oil on wood, measuring 28.3 by 23.2 cm, and was acquired from the Jules Bache Collection in 1949, having been housed originally by Prince Joseph Poniatowski and was held in Vienna until at least the mid-1920s. It is noteworthy that this young woman is aged ANNO ETATIS SVAE XVII, in her seventeenth year, which was almost certainly Katherine’s age in 1540-1 during her period as queen. The sitter wears a rich gown of black lined with pearls and gold along the breast, with slashed red sleeves, gold embroidered cuffs and a brooch of gold hanging from the breast set with what appears to be a mythological or classical image. She wears a gold necklace set with diamonds and three pearls. Her French hood is embroidered with gold, trimmed in red and set with precious gold stones. The costume and headdress are probably French, which is interesting in view of the fact that Katherine was reported to favour French costume during her period as queen.
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The sitter’s complexion is rosy, with sensuous red lips, a prominent nose, brownish gold hair and blue eyes.

The portrait was first suggested by G.F. Waagen in 1866 as representing an English lady, confirmed by Paul Ganz as a portrait of an English lady dating from 1540.
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Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America
intriguingly suggested that the costume of the sitter indicated that it was painted during Katherine’s time as queen (1540-2).
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Possibly, as Ganz suggested, both the locket and the gold setting for the cameo were designed by Holbein himself, perhaps, if the sitter was Katherine, as a gift for the new queen. More importantly, Susan E. James and Jamie S. Franco identified the sitter as Katherine Howard based on a supposed resemblance with another portrait painted by Levina Teerlinc.
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As David Starkey suggested, ‘it would be unusual for someone [of evident youth] to sit for a miniature unless they had very high status.’
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If this portrait was painted during Katherine’s period of queenship, it seems highly likely that it does represent her, for there are no other royal women who are candidates for the sitter. The four previously mentioned royal women were significantly older than sixteen or seventeen in 1540-1: Mary Tudor was twenty-four, Margaret Douglas twenty-five, Frances Brandon twenty-three and Eleanor Brandon twenty-one. The rich costume and expensive jewellery indicate that the sitter cannot have been a mere lady-in-waiting, but in view of those facts already mentioned above, it is highly probable that the sitter is indeed Katherine. This is strengthened in relation to the fact that she was probably born in 1524, making her sixteen in 1540-1, and because of a resemblance with an engraving of the queen created by Francesco Bartolozzi after Hans Holbein the Younger. Apart from sitting in exactly the same position, both sitters have reddish-gold hair, pale skin, blue eyes, sensuous lips and a small neck. Holbein’s image confirms reports of Katherine’s appearance as beautiful, graceful and elegant. It also establishes that her appearance conformed to contemporary expectations of female beauty.

Although this tentative identification allows us to perceive Katherine’s probable appearance, her actual personality and characteristics are somewhat more difficult to deduce. Surviving source material, preserved mainly by English chroniclers at the king’s court, contains little in relation to the queen aside from references to the splendid court ceremonies in which she played her part and, inevitably, the manner of her downfall. All that we do know of her is contained only in hostile documentation produced by prejudiced individuals under extraordinary circumstances, when threatened with misprision of treason. Unsurprisingly, writers who have utilised such material to theorise what Henry VIII’s fifth queen must have been like personally have concluded that she was a ‘juvenile delinquent’,
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‘an empty-headed wanton’,
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even ‘a natural tart who knew exactly what she was doing’.
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One rather unfairly compared Katherine with her predecessor and cousin Anne Boleyn: ‘Katherine Howard, another royal wife to die on adultery charges, mattered only a little longer than it took Henry to cheer up after he had her beheaded; by contrast, Anne triggered the English Reformation.’
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