French Hood Images

Detail view of Elizabeth Seymour-Cromwell.

This image is called by most sources as Portrait of Catherine Howard by Hans Holbein c.1539. The Web Gallery of Art notes the image dated at 1540-41. Oil on wood, 74 x 51 cm, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio.

However, according to Wikipedia's article Elizabeth Seymour,

"Scholars in the Victorian era incorrectly identified the portrait of Elizabeth ... as depicting Queen Catherine Howard. However, historian Antonia Fraser has recently proved that this image is far more likely to portray Elizabeth Seymour-Cromwell. The sitter wears a widow's outfit, which Catherine Howard never had reason to wear - but Elizabeth did, since her first husband, Sir Anthony, died in 1534. Furthermore, the woman shown in the above portrait shows a clear family resemblance to Jane Seymour, particularly in the chin and mouth."

See also: Catherine Howard

I am more inclined to this later identification, at least for my purposes in keeping file names separate.

Note in the image below a demarcation line of the French hood can be seen on the right side, near where the ear would be. It is apparantly clearly seen, including stitching lines, in the large printed image in a book that femalegamer owns, Hans Holbein by Oskar Batschmann & Pascal Griener.

A high resolution version (1576 x 2313, 296 KB) of this image may be viewed at the Wikimedia Commons site.

This color image from Wikimedia Commons,Catherine Howard [Art] Retrieved February 28, 2006 from the World Wide Web: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Hans_Holbein_d._J._027.jpg

Elizabeth Seymour [Article] Retrieved August 1, 2005 from the World Wide Web: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Seymour

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