Anne Boleyn Portrait’s Hidden Edit May Refute Witchcraft Rumor

February

/ 2026

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A familiar portrait of Anne Boleyn has just yielded an unfamiliar secret. Infrared scanning and tree-ring dating suggest an Elizabethan artist deliberately altered the so-called “Hever Rose” portrait to show Anne’s hands - apparently to rebut the centuries-old claim that Henry VIII’s doomed queen had a “witch’s” sixth finger, reports The Guardian.

This finding reframes a famous Tudor image as something more than a copy of an approved likeness. If the portrait really was adjusted during Elizabeth I’s reign, it may have served as political messaging, defending not only Anne’s reputation, but also Elizabeth’s legitimacy at a time when Catholic critics were keen to undermine it, writes Artnet News.

Infrared Scans Reveal the Moment the Artist “Went Rogue”

Curators at Hever Castle, Anne Boleyn’s childhood home in Kent, say scientific imaging uncovered an underdrawing beneath the painted surface. That underdrawing includes a “discarded triangular form” under Anne’s right arm, interpreted as the point when the artist departed from a standard “pattern” and reworked the composition to make her hands visible, with five fingers clearly shown on each hand.

The technical work combines infrared reflectography and materials analysis carried out at the Hamilton Kerr Institute (University of Cambridge) with dendrochronology of the oak panel. The tree-ring dating places the panel around 1583, during Elizabeth I’s reign, strengthening the idea that the portrait was produced amid late-16th-century religious and dynastic tensions.

The painting of Anne Boleyn at Hever Castle

The painting of Anne Boleyn at Hever Castle, displaying both her hands. c. 1550. (Public domain)

A Tudor “Smear Campaign” and the Sixth Finger Myth

The sixth-finger story is often treated today as lurid gossip, but in the Elizabethan period it was political ammunition. Artnet notes that Catholic polemicist Nicholas Sander (Sanders) portrayed Anne as “witchlike” and physically “unnatural,” listing supposed deformities such as a sixth finger - an attack aimed at discrediting Elizabeth by tarnishing her mother.

Hever Castle’s curators argue the hands are not incidental decoration: they read as a visual argument, showing five digits precisely because the rumor was circulating. As historian Helene Harrison, author of The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn (2025), put it in Hever’s statement, she suspected the prominently displayed hands were intended to counter Sander’s allegation, and says the new technical analysis supports that interpretation.

This fits a broader Tudor reality: accusations of witchcraft were frequently weaponized to ruin reputations and destabilize rivals. Ancient Origins has previously explored how claims of bewitchment and “unlawful love” swirled around Anne Boleyn even in her lifetime, long before witchcraft became a felony under Henry VIII’s 1542 Witchcraft Act.

The portrait of Anne Boleyn being scanned. (Hever Castle)

Exhibition Plans and Why the Portrait Still Matters

Hever Castle says the discovery feeds directly into a major exhibition, Capturing a Queen: The Image of Anne Boleyn, opening 11 February and running until 2 January 2027. The show will examine how Anne’s image was “created, deliberately altered and politically deployed,” and will bring together a large group of portraits to explore how her posthumous likeness was shaped by later agendas.

More broadly, it’s a reminder that Tudor portraiture often wasn’t “documentary” in a modern sense. Workshops reused approved facial patterns for recognizable royal images, and those patterns could be edited as politics shifted. In this case, the edit (hands added, fingers counted) appears to have been the point.

Top image: Anne Boleyn shown holding a red rose with hands clearly displayed. Infrared scans have been used to see through paint layers and detect earlier design choices. Source: Hever Castle, “Secrets Beneath Hever’s ‘Rose’ Portrait”

By Gary Manners