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Newly Identified portrait of William Shakespeare
'This doesn't add up' ... the Cobbe portrait. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images
'This doesn't add up' ... the Cobbe portrait. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

To find the mind's construction in the face: The great Shakespeare debate

This article is more than 15 years old

Is it or isn't it? Claims that the Cobbe portrait is a painting of Shakespeare made during his lifetime have been quashed by the UK's leading expert on Tudor portraiture. Tarnya Cooper, 16th-century curator at the National Portrait Gallery, says she is "very sceptical", and questions Professor Stanley Wells's main argument: that the Cobbe is the original from which the work known as the Janssen portrait was copied - and that the Janssen portrait represents Shakespeare.

Cooper does not deny that the two paintings are versions of the same image; it was common practice to make copies of portraits in the period. But she points out that the Janssen portrait was doctored in the 18th or 19th century to look like Shakespeare. If anything, she says, both works are more likely to represent the courtier Sir Thomas Overbury. "I respect Wells's scholarship enormously," she says, "but portraiture is a very different area, and this doesn't add up."

Wells contends that Martin Droeshout's 1623 engraving for the frontispiece of the First Folio was also based on the Cobbe portrait. Cooper disagrees. "The costumes are very similar, but that was the fashion," she says. "Hundreds of men would have worn doublets like that. And the hair and beard - it's the fashion of the period. One cannot make an argument based on facial resemblance alone." More compelling evidence would include an inscription giving a date, or a coat of arms; a firmer provenance would also be helpful.

Wells, however, remains convinced. "The Janssen portrait was believed to be of Shakespeare until the 1940s," he said yesterday. "Yes, it had been altered to make it look more like Shakespeare, but we believe that alteration was in fact restoring it to its original appearance." He added: "In our opinion, the resemblances between the Cobbe portrait and the Droeshout engraving outweigh the differences. We do have a painting that represents what Shakespeare ought to have looked like - a gentleman, who at that time was wealthy, had a coat of arms and land. The case is not 100%, but to my mind is 90%."

Over to Cooper: "Every five to 10 years, a 'new' Shakespeare portrait will appear," she says. "There are between 50 and 100 images in the National Portrait Gallery stacks that were at one time considered to be him."

More on this story

More on this story

  • A new view: is this the real Shakespeare?

  • In praise of ... Shakespeare in London

  • Mystery relic found during London excavation is linked to Shakespeare

  • If the face fits

  • A true Shakespeare 'portrait'? Surely not...

  • What's in a face? Portraits of Shakespeare

  • More doubts cast on Bard portrait

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