And here my response to the question, whether this depicted woman is "Anne Boleyn":
My name is Maike Vogt-Lüerssen. I am a historian and I just read the BBC-article "Is this the real face of Anne Boleyn?", written by Harriet Bradshaw and published on 2 May 2026. And I am able to give an answer to this question. Yes, this is the face of Anne Boleyn. I discovered in 2002 by accident when writing a biography about Margaret of Austria that we are still able to identify the members of the high dynasties in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance when we learn the specific symbols and emblems and colours of them, when we know the history of the costume (to date the paintings) and when we know the traditions and customs of these epochs. I used the portrait of Anne Boleyn already in my book "Die Frauen des Hauses Tudor – Das Schicksal der weiblichen Mitglieder einer englischen Königsdynastie" and on my website at: Anne Boleyn.

It is very important to know that over 90% of the people in the Renaissance still were not able to read and write. Therefore every painter used the "symbolic language". If you see a name on a portrait painting in these epochs you know that this was attributed to the art-piece much later (earliest time is the 17th century) by the owner or the curator of the painting or drawing. My research work shows that more than every second written claim who the depicted on these paintings and drawings is, is wrong. This is the case also in the portraits the BBC showed in their article. The second picture (Fig. 2) is not showing Anne Boleyn, but the favourite sister of Henry VIII., Maria Tudor senior. Anne Boleyn never used the letter "B" to tell the people looking at her portraits "that’s me". She used the letters "A and R" (for "Anne" and "Regina") and "H and A" (for "Henry" and "Anne"). The "B" stands for "Brandon", the third husband (do you see the three pearls under the "B"?) and the great love of Maria Tudor senior, Charles Brandon (1484-1545), Duke of Suffolk. The third picture (Fig. 3) shows Jane Seymour. It is not "Anna Bollein Queen" or the mother of Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth Howard († 1518) (she was too old at the time, when the drawing was made). These are stupid suggestions. We are able to differentiate Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour very easily because of their hair colour. This very blond lady is Jane Seymour, dressed like a woman of her time (in the 1530s) when she was pregnant.

On page 9 of the BBC-article the young Princess depicted is not Elizabeth I., but her cousin and half-sister Katherine or Catherine Carey (1523/24-1569) (Fig. 4), the daughter of Anne Boleyn’s elder sister, Mary Boleyn. Her portrait can be easily dated with the help of the history of costume. It was created between 1528 and 1535. The sitter therefore cannot be Elizabeth I, who was born on 7 September 1533. The hair of Elizabeth I. (1533-1603) (Fig. 5 and Fig. 6) was light-red, not dark-red like that of Katherine Carey.

To identify Anne Boleyn is in deed not as easy as all the other members of the Tudor dynasty, because Henry VIII. wanted to remove everything what would remind of her. Every written word by her or for her, every book of her, every painting or drawing of her, everything, what could remind of her, had to be destroyed. The message should be: She never existed. And the people in England were afraid to keep anything of her. Henry VIII. was a very dangerous psychopath. What could have survived of her? There is only one person we have to look at: Hans Holbein der Jüngere or the Younger, the court painter of Henry VIII., whose business was to draw and paint the different members of the Tudor dynasty. He was at the difficult time of Anne Boleyn not in England, but in Basel (Switzerland), because he had problems in his family that had to be solved, and of cause, he took his art-pieces with him. My task was therefore to look at these paintings and especially drawings. I already knew at that time what most of the members of the Tudor dynasty looked like. Finally I found drawings of Anne Boleyn and her sister Mary Boleyn by using the portraits of close relatives, her daughter Elizabeth I. and her niece.

By the way, I needed around 12 years to come to the same result as the computer science team at the University of Bradford.

Kind regards, Maike