Six Lives, National Portrait Gallery review — Henry VIII’s wives become queens of their own domain

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From shrewd Anne Boleyn to misrepresented Anne of Cleves, the women emerge as distinct individuals

In the recent musical Six, Henry VIII’s queens are solo singers competing for the role of worst-treated wife until they abandon rivalry and join together as a girl band. It is as a group that the queens have always been considered. In countless retellings, their fates — divorced, beheaded, died etc — rather than their individual stories build what National Portrait Gallery curator Charlotte Bolland calls “an almost implausible melodrama”, the most famous episode in English history.

“From first to last he was a dangerous and appalling animal,” historian Geoffrey Elton concluded, and we sense that in the cold eyes and hard features of an anonymous youthful half-length portrait . Its pendant is riveting: Katherine of Aragon, aged 35, in crimson and gold, dignified, intelligent, resolute, wears an expression between sympathy and reproach as she faces her spouse.

 

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