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Is This A Picture Of
Shakespeare We See Before Us?

He looks artistic enough, he's certainly Elizabethan and he may even be Shakespeare. Anthony DePalma writes.

Shakespeare left behind thousands of the most memorable lines ever written, but not a single picture of himself frpm the most creative years of his remarkable life.

The only authentic images of him to survive were made after his death: a marble bust on his tomb in England and the stodgy engraving used on the frontispiece of the First Folio and reproduced everywhere.

Now a retired Canadian engineer, telling a tale of ancient family ties, mistaken judgements and surprise revelations has roiled the world of Shakespeare scholarship by saying he possesses a portrait painted in 1603 showing the Bard as a coy man of 39, with a full head of hair and a Mona Lisa smile.

 

The owner, who is guarding his identity, contends that the portrait was done by an ancestor of his who was an actor in Shakespeare's time. He says the panel has remained in the family for 400 years and was taken to Canada when the family migrated at the beginning of the 20th century.

The 40- by 33-centimetre oil on wood has already undergone more than six years of testing by experts at the Canadian Conservation Institute, a government agency in Ottawa. The institute said it was convinced the artwork was indeed an Elizabethan portrait, unaltered and authentic. It was not prepared to say, however, that the man with the enigmatic smile was Shakespeare.

"We were able to prove that the painting is an old painting from the early 17th century and not a forgery," said Marie-Claude Corbeil, senior conservation scientist at the institute. "Who it portrays, we can't say. That's up to other experts."

Since the painting's existence was revealed this month by The Globe and Mail in Toronto, scholarly opinion about it has been divided.

The scientific proof of the age of the work is widely accepted. But because of the effect that an unconventional portrait would have on the view of Shakespeare, about whose life and personality tantalisingly little is known, many questions remain.

Much weight is given to a linen-paper label attached to the back of the wood panel. Experts who have examined it say they believe it says: "Shakspere, Born April 23, 1564 Died April 23, 1616 Aged 52 This Likeness taken 1603 Age at that time 39 ys."

The ink on the label is so faded that it can barely be seen and cannot be tested. The paper itself was found to have been made of plant fibre, not tree pulp, from 1475 to 1640.

While the abundance of information on the label might seem to help the owner's case, experts find its completeness suspicious. "If it was less informative, I could trust it a bit more," said Alexander Leggatt, a professor of English at the University of Toronto. "It makes it seem like somebody is trying to prove something."

Even so, scholars like Leggatt can't help hoping this portrait is the real thing.

"It's hard to see A Midsummer Night's Dream coming from the stiff character portrayed in the folio engraving," Leggatt said. "But this image allows us to relate the man to the humour, comedy and mischief in his work. He's actually wearing a bit of a smirk, all of which makes the portrait very tempting."

The man portrayed in the Canadian panel bears little resemblance to the known images of Shakespeare, most strikingly because his head is covered by long auburn-coloured curls. His hairline is quite high, and scholars think it plausible that the man said to be 39 in the portrait would have gone bald.

Beyond the hair it is the intensely human expression of the man in the portrait that has provoked the interest of scholars and experts.

"This is what we want Shakespeare to look like," said Richard Monette, artistic director of the Stratford Festival of Canada. "The man who wrote these plays had staggering imagination. This portrait makes Shakespeare look like a bohemian, an artist and not a prosperous businessman. We see somebody full of life, someone who is roguish, with a twinkle in his eye."

The owner's efforts to authenticate the painting began in 1993, when he took it to the institute, which began tests the next year.

Corbeil, the institute scientist, said tree ring dating of the wood showed it to be Baltic oak from the late 16th century. Then the panel underwent a radiograph, a type of x-ray to determine that an earlier painting was not hidden beneath the top layer of paint.

Scientists also examined the paints and found they consisted of traditional materials contemporary with the 1603 date painted on the upper right-hand corner of the panel.

Because the inscription on the back was illegible, the institute relied on a 1909 article from The Connoisseur magazine of London, written by M.H. Spielmann, an expert in antiquities who examined the panel at that time. He concluded that the panel was not a portrait of Shakespeare, but many of his unscientific assumptions have proved incorrect.

But Spielmann wrote that the owner of the panel was a T.Hale Sanders, who had told him the painting had been in the family's possession for almost 100 years. That contradicts the version of the story told by the current owner, who said the painting had been in the family's possession since it was done by an ancestor, John Sanders, in 1603.

There are other inconsistencies. Experts say the phrasing of the inscription is not common for the early 17th century. The upper lip of the man in the panel painting is longer and more pointed than in the folio engraving.

Leggatt's colleague at the university, John H. Astington, a professor of English and drama, said he had trouble accepting the simple tunic of the man in the portrait.

At 39, he said, Shakespeare was famous and would have worn finer clothes if he sat for a portrait.

The owner told The Globe and Mail he planned to sell the painting at auction. Experts say the painting is valuable even if it cannot be authenticated as the only contemporary portrait of Shakespeare.

• Story originally published by •
The New York Times via The
Sydney Morning Herald / Australia - May 28 2001

 

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