"They're all lookalike fakes!"--L'il Jak
Sr. Rojo
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/arts/design/04shak.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
March 4, 2006
Will the Real William Shakespeare Please Stand Up?
By ALAN RIDING
LONDON, March 1 ‹ The first painting donated in 1856 to the new National
Portrait Gallery here was of William Shakespeare, already well enshrined as
the nation's literary idol. For the gallery, the oil recorded as NPG 1
seemed like a singularly apt founding work for its collection. And now, as
the museum celebrates its 150th anniversary, it is again in the limelight.
But does this so-called Chandos portrait actually depict Shakespeare?
Indeed, do any of dozens of other "Shakespeare" paintings and engravings
offer a true likeness of the man who was born in Stratford-on-Avon in 1564
and died there in 1616?
These are the central questions addressed in "Searching for Shakespeare," a
fascinating exhibition on view here through May 29. For this inquiry, the
National Portrait Gallery has for the first time united the six oils most
frequently said to portray Shakespeare. For further comparison, it is also
presenting the 1623 engraving of him in the First Folio of his collected
plays, as well as a plaster cast of the bust that was placed above his
grave in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford sometime between 1620 and 1623.
And the answer? Well, for all the light that Shakespeare threw on human
nature, his own life remains shadowy: his education, the "lost years"
between 1585 and 1592, his relations with his wife and children and, yes,
even his appearance are very much matters of conjecture.
Still, of all the competing paintings, the Chandos portrait has emerged as
the strongest contender. "It's not absolutely watertight," said Tarnya
Cooper, the gallery's curator for 16th-century painting, who organized the
show, "but the evidence has increased. It is a portrait that probably
represents Shakespeare, but will we ever have watertight evidence?"
As part of its search, the gallery has assembled documentary evidence of
Shakespeare's life, including the church's written approval of his marriage
to Anne Hathaway in 1582; the parish register of the baptism of their first
child, Susanna, in 1583; the baptism of their twins, Hamnet and Judith, in
1585; Hamnet's burial 11 years later; and Shakespeare's will, in which he
left his "second-best bed" to his widow.
The show also displays stage costumes of the era, "quarto" editions of his
plays, which carried his name only after 1598, and portraits said to be of
his fellow writers Ben Jonson and John Donne as well as of Shakespeare's
first patron, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton.
But the focus is Shakespeare himself and, after more than three years of
study and forensic tests, the gallery has reached some conclusions about
how he looked.
The engraving in the First Folio as well as the bust in Trinity Church are
given weight because, in both cases, people who knew Shakespeare ‹ his
family and fellow members of his theater company ‹ presumably accepted them
as likenesses. While the bust shows him to be round-cheeked and prosperous,
the engraving depicts him slimmed down and younger.
The big loser, however, is the so-called Flower portrait, an
often-reproduced image that resembles the First Folio engraving by Martin
Droeshout the Younger. Although the oil is dated 1609, technical
examination has proved that it is a 19th-century portrait painted on top of
a 16th-century Italian painting of the Madonna and Child. "It fooled
scholars for quite a long time," Ms. Cooper noted.
Also dismissed is the so-called Janssen portrait, which belongs to the
Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington. It is inscribed with the sitter's
age, 46 in 1610, which coincides with that of Shakespeare. But tests in
1988 demonstrated that the original painting was later tampered with to
show a balding man who might pass for Shakespeare. The sitter's hairline
has since been restored.
A painting known as the Soest portrait has also been promoted as a true
likeness, but it is now described as a memorial portrait; that is, it was
painted a half-century after Shakespeare's death. It is a sensitive
painting, with the sitter dressed much as in the Chandos portrait. It also
suggests that by the mid-17th century, Shakespeare was returning to vogue.
Two images offered as portraits of a young Shakespeare are also in the
show. The oil known as the Grafton portrait is inscribed with the sitter's
age, 24, and the date of the painting, 1588, which would be correct for
Shakespeare. But nothing else links it to the playwright. Further, the
sitter is portrayed in scarlet clothes, a color reserved at that time for
the nobility.
Another candidate is the so-called Sanders portrait. A label on the back of
the panel gives the traditional dates of Shakespeare's birth and death, but
it was only in the 18th century that Shakespeare's birth was celebrated on
April 23 (he was baptized on April 26, 1564). In addition, the painting is
dated 1603, when Shakespeare was 39, but the sitter appears far younger.
Finally, then, there is the Chandos portrait, which has been dated between
1600 and 1610. It depicts a man who could well be the same man in the 1623
engraving and the church monument, with a receding hairline, a high
forehead, long hair and a beard. In the portrait, he also wears an earring,
which was fashionable among actors in Shakespeare's day.
As early as 1719, an engraver and antiquarian, George Vertue, noted that it
was a portrait of Shakespeare painted by John Taylor and that it was
bequeathed by Taylor to Sir William Davenant, Shakespeare's godson and
himself a mid-17th-century playwright of renown.
So was this Shakespeare around age 40?
In the 19th century, some Englishmen did not like the idea. One critic, J.
Hain Friswell, wrote: "One cannot readily imagine our essentially English
Shakespeare to have been a dark, heavy man, with a foreign expression, of
decidedly Jewish physiognomy, thin curly hair, a somewhat lubricious mouth,
red-edged eyes, wanton lips, with a coarse expression and his ears tricked
out with earrings."
But Ms. Cooper, who believes the Chandos portrait a "fairly likely" image
of Shakespeare, said Friswell may have been deceived by the dark yellow
varnish. "Portraits are not, and can never be forensic evidence of
likeness," she said, "and comparison based upon the facial proportions of
portraits does not therefore enhance our understanding of the various
putative images of Shakespeare."
Just days before the opening of this show, however, a German art historian,
Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, presented a more definitive view, based on
forensic tests and computer imaging carried out in Germany. Using a bust of
Shakespeare in the Garrick Club here and a supposed death mask of the
playwright, she has offered a computer image of the "real" Shakespeare, one
that coincides with the Chandos and Flower portraits.
But while Ms. Hammerschmidt-Hummel won headlines in Britain for her claim,
it was quickly dismissed by scholars from the Shakespeare Institute in
Stratford and by officials at the National Portrait Gallery, who pointed
out that the Garrick bust is an 18th-century sculpture, that the death
mask's authenticity has not been proved and that the Flower portrait is
false.
"I did not find the methodology credible," Ms. Cooper said.
Clearly, searching for Shakespeare is proving more fruitful than finding him.
--
'Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house - he's lost his entire house -
there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting
on the porch.''
--GeeDubya (Mobile, AL)