After decades, tiny 500-year-old royal portrait is identified as Mary Tudor

Art historian says miniature is of Henry VIII’s daughter – not his sixth wife Katherine Parr

It’s Mary Tudor – by a nose. Not in a horse race, but from a comparison of portraits of Mary, Henry VIII’s elder daughter who became the first crowned queen of England, and Katherine Parr, his sixth wife.

For decades, experts, including the noted historian and museum director Sir Roy Strong, have thought that a near 500-year-old miniature was of Parr. Now several leading Tudor authorities are convinced it is Mary, often dubbed “Bloody Mary” because as an ardent Catholic queen she ordered the killing of many Protestants.