MYSTERY and Website
The purpose of this website is to formulate and analyze the properties of the stained glass portrait, we named "Katrain" as is shown here on the right. The purpose is not to solicit acknowledgement or authentication from any person or institute in regard to the portrait.
Through inheritance, the portrait came to me. For obvious reasons, we did a lot of research about the who, what, where and when. The amount of data became so vast that we crammed it into this website. What the research already revealed is the time period in which the portrait was created. See Period Specific and Glass.
Queen Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of King Henry VIII of England has always been a controversial lady. From her short Queen tenure (July 1540 to November 1541), her unduly demise, to even her uncanny resemblance on a few works of art, Her Majesty is still mysterious. To understand the real Catherine is the discipline of the Art Historian Detective.
We all know that to assemble a provenance is extremely difficult. Therefore, we would be very thankful to any person who could provide information on the “Tart Hall” Inventory; ”hereafter”, second paragraph at the heading Provenance
Short on time? In heading Absolutely you will find a short summary of the core considerations. Luckily Science does not lie. The XRF analyses and the Glass irregularities exclude its creation anytime after the 17ᵗʰ century. Our deduction is that only Hans Holbein the Younger could have created "Katrain" as well as TMA #1926.57 during the reign of Catherine Howard. Any other opinion, based on facts, would be very welcome.
NOTE: About ten years ago, the name of the fifth wife of King Henry the Eight was written as Catherine Howard. Interest in the Tudor dynasty has soared, mostly because of the TV Series “The Tudors” from the BBC. Catherine has now various spellings such as Katherine, Katheryn and Catherin. In Dutch it is Katrijn.
|
