Jane Seymour, Queen of England

On 29 January 1536, Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England’s King Henry VIII, had a miscarriage at Hampton Court Palace. Four months later she was sentenced to death on the charge of alleged unfaithfulness and executed the day before the king’s engagement to Jane Seymour. The later queen had come to Henry’s court in 1530 and served her two predecessors as lady-inwaiting. Jane Seymour is the only one of the wives of Henry VIII buried together with the king at Windsor Castle – not least because she was the mother of the long-awaited and only heir to the throne. She died in October 1537 while giving birth to him. Hans Holbein had made a career for himself in Basel. He had lived in London since 1532 and was appointed court painter to the English monarch in 1536, the year of the royal wedding. The monochrome background of the painting is a concession to the demands of the court portrait. In contrast to the technique he used for other subjects, Holbein conceived such portraits with a pronounced flatness, thus giving them a formal character. Jane Seymour’s precious jewellery, her garment and her pale features are bathed in an even light and presented in every detail – an old-fashioned method that had been superseded by a full-toned chiaroscuro not only in Italian painting (with which Holbein must have beenwell-acquainted). However, it is precisely this plain objectivity that creates the necessary distance from the viewer. © Cäcilia Bischoff, Masterpieces of the Picture Gallery. A Brief Guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2010