We all remember Holbein’s famous paintings, but there were other painters working beyond Holbein. Let’s take a look at some of the lesser known portraits of Henry VIII.
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Hey, welcome back to the YouTube channel for the Renaissance English History Podcast. I am your host, Heather. I’ve been podcasting on Tudor England since 2009 with my show, the original Tudor History Podcast.
This channel is where I put all of my episodes from all of my different shows, as well as lots of extra content like this video right here. Today we are going to talk about some of the lesser known portraits of Henry VIII. So there’s like the famous ones, the Whitehall one, the one, the portrait of Henry with his family.
There’s, you know, like four or five super famous, well known portraits of Henry. We’re going to look today at some of those. paintings, portraits of Henry from when he was younger, as well as some of the lesser known ones. But first, if you want to see more Tudor history in your YouTube feed, why not go ahead and hit subscribe right now so you never miss a video that I put out.
Alright, let’s get started with the one image that we have of Henry as a child. This is an illuminated manuscript that was given to Henry VII around 1503 1504, and this is the cover of it, or the cover page, and we see Henry receiving the illuminated manuscript, but look in the left hand side.
There are three children, so that would be Margaret and Mary, and then there on the top you see some red hair, That is young Henry. This was when the family was mourning the death of Elizabeth of York and So this was showing them kind of in mourning and Henry is actually kind of clutching His mother’s bedclothes and sheets, which is very very tragic This is you know an early image of Henry showing Uh, his emotions as a young boy, which I think it’s really quite poignant that, you know, his sisters are together kind of supporting each other.
And then there’s Henry off to the side, just kind of crying in his mother’s bedclothes. Of course, he was very, very close to his mother, so her death would have hit him hard and did hit him hard.
Now this is The Bust of a Boy by Guido Mazzoni, and Guido Mazzoni died around 1518. , this is a life size painted and gilded terracotta bust of a young boy laughing with his head turned three quarters to the left. It has been at sometimes thought to be a laughing girl or an elf.
Or, a young Henry VIII, Prince Henry, when he was seven years old. Its identification as Henry is still a conjecture,
Its provenance is through the royal family, so it had belonged to the crown, so that is why people think that it was a young Henry VIII. when he was about seven. And Mazzoni had been in London during that time. So, you know, who knows, but I think it’s an interesting thing to, to see Henry having this expression.
It kind of looks like the young Henry that we imagined. It’s kind of hamming it up, um, quite outgoing. You know, you hear the story about how he was dancing at his brother’s wedding, at Arthur’s wedding. And so I don’t know, I, I like it. I, I’m going to say it is, but it’s conjecture at this point.
the next one we’re going to look at is this. This is Henry in 1509. So this was right around the time that he became king. He would have been about 18 years old here.
And this is Henry. in his prime. This was when he married Catherine. This was when he became king, started to really step into his own and become a man. Look at his rings. Look at these jewels around his neck and holding his cloak together. Look at the fur. It’s just really, really stunning.
So yeah, you don’t really get much of a hint of the tyrant that he would become. This was right when he first became king, young teenager, young teenaged Henry. Now this is Henry as King. This is from about 1520. It’s by an unknown artist in the Netherlands and it lives in the National Portrait Gallery now.
In the top you can see the Tudor Rose and the Beaufort Portcullis. Just look at him, look at those clothes, look at the backdrop. This is when he was about 30 ish years old, so he was still married to Catherine. He had um, Princess Mary at this point. He hadn’t yet started his affair with Anne Boleyn.
This would have been him around the time of the Field of Cloth of Gold as well, right around that time.
And then we’re going to look at two more of Henry, still young. This would have been in his Anne Boleyn stage. Both of these are between 1335 and 1340. They’re both Anglo Netherland artists and they live in the National Portrait Gallery.
So Henry is starting to bulk up, bulk up, I guess, here by this point. And he is starting to look more like the familiar Henry that we know from the later portraits. This would have been right during his period of executing Anne Boleyn between 1535 and 1540. So executing Anne Boleyn, marrying Jane Seymour, and then eventually Anne of Cleves.
This is what he would have looked like during that period. I
think it’s interesting that he still has that kind of medieval hairstyle that he had when he was younger in the 1509 portrait. At least in this painting, I don’t know about in here because his head is covered.
Of course Holbein, the Holbein images are the most famous ones that we have of Henry, but there were many other artists who painted the King’s portrait before Holbein even came to England, obviously.
So there you have it. Some of the lesser known portraits of Henry through the years. It’s a little bit shorter of a video today than normal because I had to go to the post office to ship out the first 200 Tudor planners. Like this is the Tudor planner. You can get them on my shop now, uh, at Tudorfair.
com. I’ll put a link, but this is the 2025 one. You can see it’s a beautiful, beautiful book that looks like an illuminated manuscript. And then inside, this is the weekly layout. You can see there’s like this week in Tudor history, all of that. So it looks historic. And then this is the monthly layout.
There’s quotes. There’s a Spotify playlist so that you can listen to music while you’re planning. Um, monthly events, all that kind of stuff. Lots of note pages in the back. Ooh, and stickers. Look at these fun stickers. So you can get this at TutorFair. com and I do an Indiegogo every year to pay for the printing costs because I self publish it.
So I do a crowdfunding every year to pay for the printing costs. So the early people who got theirs, I just shipped the first 200 out and I’m going to ship the next 200 out in a couple more days. Um, and so I was at the post office this morning. I got my cardio in and my strength in. lugging boxes of these into the post office.
Super fun. I love this time of year. It’s planner time of year. And, uh, anyway, so it’s a little short, little more of a short video than normal, but I think it’s kind of fun to look at these images of Henry before the, uh, the super famous ones that we know of now.
Huh? So, yay. Thanks for watching you guys. If you made it to the end of this video and you enjoyed it, I sure would appreciate a press of that like button. It helps to feed the algorithm and get our content to even more people. I hope I earned your subscription to my channel where I put out videos like this on the regular.
If you want to keep binging Tudor content, here’s a Portraits and Propaganda video I did recently, and here’s a video that YouTube thinks you will enjoy.
Thanks so much for watching. You are deeply loved. I’m so glad I share the planet with you. And don’t forget to drink your water. I have a super festive water cup. I just got it this weekend at Michael’s. It’s so festive. I love it. I love it. It makes me so happy. You have an amazing day. Bye.
Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast,  the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
