03/10/2022
An Auction sleeper returns to Hampton Court. This small white and gold bird, crowned, clutching a sceptre and perched rather uncomfortably in a clump of Tudor roses, was unveiled at Hampton Court on March 4th. A rediscovered emblem of Anne Boleyn, the falcon’s display marks the 500th anniversary of the day Henry VIII first set eyes on his future bride. “…It is being displayed under the spectacular hammer beam roof of the Great Hall, from which the palace experts suspect it originally came. Anne's white falcon, its original colors visible again after it was gently cleaned of a layer of black paint and centuries of wax, soot and grime. British antiques dealer Paul Fitzsimmons, on a hunch, purchased it at a small 2019 auction for just £75.
Henry was still married to Katherine of Aragon when he is first recorded as seeing one of her ladies in waiting: the 21-year-old Anne.
By 1533 Henry had changed the course of English history, broken with Rome and annulled his marriage to Katherine, and could
marry Anne. In the first joy of their marriage and hope of a male heir. Within three years, when she had produced only a daughter, the future Elizabeth I, she was accused of serial adultery and in**st, and beheaded on Tower Green, leaving Henry free to marry the third of his six wives, Jane Seymour.
Fitzsimmons alerted Historic Royal Palaces of his hunch about the falcon, and research has
now established how closely it matches 43 surviving birds, barely visible from ground level in the frieze and roof timbers, and even the name of the craftsman who made them; Thomas Joyner, paid £5 4s 2d for 250 ‘of the King's and Queens badges’. The spectacular roof was built in 1532….”
Article courtesy of:
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