The Welbeck Miniature of Shakespeare: Has German Technology Crowned A New Shakespeare Portrait King?

Above: The German Engineered 3D Shakespeare composite portrait (left) and the Welbeck Miniature Portrait of Shakespeare (right) from the Portland Collection

 

 “Few of the so-called portraits of Shakespeare can be proved to have had his name associated with them for so long a period."

                                                        Richard Goulding, Portland Collection Catalogue 

There's been an odd development regarding the history of Shakespeare portraits. To understand it, please first examine the above side-by-side photo comparison. On the right side we have a long-discredited (though later 100% redeemed) miniature portrait identified in 1719 as Shakespeare by the renowned antiquarian George Vertue (1684-1756); and on the left we have a 3D rendered mask composite recently created by a German super team of forensic scientists following a seven-year study of the more authentic portraits of Shakespeare.  What is fascinating is that the study did not employ the above portrait miniature in creating the composite  3D mask. And yet the resemblance is striking. 

Some history. The Welbeck miniature was long ago discredited when a critic slandered Vertue by claiming--incorrectly--that the Welbeck miniature was not Shakespeare but instead a purposely misidentified portrait of King James I. In the decades that followed other critics simply parroted this lie until the antiquarian and art critic MH Speilmann set the record straight by backing Vertue's integrity and his original identification of the miniature as William Shakespeare as advertised.  

Spielmann went further and claimed the miniature portrait had as good a claim as any portrait on the title of Shakespeare ad vivum (painted from life):

For  my part I do not  see why this miniature likeness  should or should  not be accepted  as "the one and  only life- portrait  of the poet" any  more or less than  a score of others which  have been  published without  any censure being  incurred by the engravers.   

Another reason the Welbeck miniature has been thought suspect is because it does not resemble the other accepted portraits of Shakespeare; yet lo and behold the 3D composite comes out its near twin.

Now there's a second enigma attached to this miniature (artist unknown). As it turns out, there are two names written on the baseboard of the portrait miniature. The first name is "Shakespeare."  And the second name is "Oxford."

The miniature came into the ownership of the First Earl of Oxford, that is, c. 1719. (This was after the original line of Oxfords had died off.) Vertue worked for the Second Earl of Oxford. After I had harassed the Portland Collection into kindly photographing the backing of the miniature, I was able to confirm that the handwriting, as advertised, was almost certainly that of the Second Earl's. (Bearing in mind I have no expertise in handwriting, but regardless the word Oxford is written almost identically to surviving copies of the Second Earl's signature.) Therefore it seems likely the Earl felt some need to sign his own miniature even though this was a rather extraordinary thing to do. You do not need to identify something residing in your prestigious collection as belonging to you. It's all very curious.  

This blog stays neutral on the authorship debate but admits to finding the portraits associated with Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, a cesspool of scandal and fascination. With that in mind, a second explanation for the name Oxford appearing on the backing on this miniature involves the theory that Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare and that the Welbeck miniature was labeled by its owner as both Shakespeare and Oxford in order to make a specific point about the great author and the lineage of Shakespeare. This is speculation, obviously.

(Note: I have photographs of the backing but hesitate to use them without direct permission from the Portland Collection.)

It's also worth pointing out that baseboard of the miniature, where both names appear, is occluded by a large blue stamp and by what appears to be an adhesive patch directly below partially covering, the name "Oxford." This could be innocuous, but I would like to see that backing held up against infiltrated light to make sure nothing vexing lies beneath.

It's also worth noting that the Welbeck miniature is in the same collection that owns the only fully established portrait of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.

Above from left: 3d SS, the Welbeck Collection portrait of Edward de Vere, the Ashbourne in mid conservation (Folger Shakespeare Library), and the Welbeck miniature.

The so-called Shakespeare death mask (wikicommons), an Unknown Gent from the Royal Collection, and the Welbeck Portrait Miniature

Related Posts on CPDE:
3D Shakespeare, Death Masks, Mark Twain, and the Great Unknown
Update on 3D Shakespeare

Oxford University, Edward de Vere, and the Stratford Bust: Is This the Smoking Gun of Shakespeare Studies?

Above left: The Welbeck portrait of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford (owned by Welbeck Abbey, image from Wikicommons). Above right: the Hunt or Stratford portrait of Shakespeare (owned by Stratford Birthplace Trust, public domain photograph from 1864).

This post picks up where my book STALKING SHAKESPEARE leaves off following its chapter on why the Hunt portrait of Shakespeare has a strong claim to Shakespeare ad vivum (painted from life) and was quite likely the template portrait used to create the iconic bust of Shakespeare in Trinity Church.

Above: the Stratford bust next to the Hunt portrait of William Shakespeare (both photos from Friswell's 1864 Life Portraits of William Shakespeare). In both likenesses Shakespeare is wearing a red jerkin beneath a black robe. No scholar as ever disputed the connection between the two artworks, but which came first?

STALKING SHAKESPEARE is not an authorship book. It's a memoir about my unruly obsession with identifying unknown courtiers in Elizabethan and Jacobean portraits. But the book does delve into the authorship debate whenever that controversy overlaps my portrait obsession (such as with the infamous Ashbourne portrait of Shakespeare) and I do my best to remain a neutral.

The Hunt portrait of Shakespeare is fascinating beyond measure and plagued with telltales scandals--for example, the portrait was discovered in a Stratford attic in the mid-19th century purposely disguised so as not to resemble Shakespeare; yet when cleaned with solvents the portrait turned out to be the spitting image of the famous town bust. No scholar has ever disputed the intimate connection between the portrait and the bust, which leaves us with two logical scenarios: either the portrait was used to create the bust or the bust was used to create the portrait. 

STALKING SHAKESPEARE takes up the claim by 19th century scholars that the portrait came first and was used to create the bust, and my book also argues the Hunt portrait needs to be tested by its owners at the Stratford Birthplace Trust. Because of their neglect, we don't know how old the portrait is or what lies beneath its overpaint (and we know via multiple expert testimony that the picture was immediately altered after its discovery, although we don't know why or to what degree it was altered). As to its age, the portrait descended from the aristocratic Clopton family collection in Stratford and had been stored in the Hunt family attic for at least a hundred years when it was discovered in 1860.

Now let's return to the famous bust at Trinity Church and ask ourselves whether or not that bust could be a tribute to Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford?

We know that the traditional Shakespeare of Stratford (the businessman/actor) was not a college-educated man and that there's no record of him even attending the local grammar school in Stratford. With that in mind, it's interesting that a traditional scholar is now conceding that the Stratford bust (and by extension the Hunt portrait) depicts Shakespeare wearing an Oxford University gown.

Lena Cowen Orlin, a professor at Georgetown University, has made this argument inside the pages of The Guardian that states:

The figure is wearing an Oxford University undergraduate’s gown, and the cushion detail is found in monuments memorialising lives of distinction in its college chapels.

She [Orlin] said the fact that he [Shakespeare] wanted to be memorialised with links to the university – despite never going to university himself – “now suggests some collegial association that we don’t know about”.

I'm not sure Orlin's logic holds up in the second paragraph, but the important point is that Shakespeare was immortalized wearing an Oxford gown when we know--and Orlin concedes this--that the traditional author did not attend Oxford. This is quite the monkey wrench tossed into the traditional narrative.

The first question that arises is why did it take centuries for scholars to figure out Shakespeare was wearing a gown that attached him to Oxford University? I would suggest that confirmation bias played a large role, which might also explain why this revelation came out of an American university instead of one in England such as, well, hmm, Oxford.

Edward de Vere, long rumored to have written the works of Shakespeare, did in fact attend Oxford University (hardly surprising for the 17th Earl of Oxford). Clearly the last thing traditional scholars want to do is connect their iconic bust to that infamous earl they despise.

But there's another type of confirmation bias at work here, I suspect, and this one can be found rooted inside the de Vere authorship camp which seems hellbent on denying any connection between their hidden author (de Vere) and the two most famous likenesses of Shakespeare: the Stratford bust at Trinity Church and the Droeshout engraving from Shakespeare's 1623 First Folio. The de Vereians vehemently want those two iconic likenesses to be red-herring representations of the actor/businessman they believe was used as a mask for the the real Shakespeare.

By contrast I think, within the Oxfordian framework, it begs to be argued that one or both of these two traditional likenesses (the bust and the engraving) were created, as much as possible within imposed limitations, to celebrate Edward de Vere. The physical similarities in the photographic comparison at the top of this post seems to my eye more than coincidental and raise questions that are never going to be answered as long as both camps keep their religious blinders on. 

If I were an Oxfordian, the question I'd be asking right now is: has Shakespeare been hidden from us in plain sight?   

Related links:

https://lostshakespeareportraits.blogspot.com/2019/10/a-curious-portrait-of-man-stabbed-57.html

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/mar/19/shakespeare-grave-effigy-believed-to-be-definitive-likeness 

Note: all photographs in this post are used for identification purposes under Fair Use laws. I apologize for not using a color photograph of the Hunt portrait, but the Stratford Birthplace Trust does not make these available.

 

Costume Dating Proves This is Not a Portrait of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford

Above: Called Edward de Vere (born 1550). Tall standing collar ending in pickadil tabs that support the small figure-of-eight ruff attached to shirt and garnished with blackwork embroidery. Small shoulder wings with pickadil tabbed fringe and padded bishop-style sleeves. Doublet (or perhaps it's a jerkin) slashed-and-puffed with embroidered shirt linen pulled through slash or perhaps the doublet is displayed open-pocketed to reveal embroidered lining. Silk embroidery also evident on wrist ruffles. Short hair. Dope boar pendant (the de Vere family crest) hanging by ribbon. Painted by unknown artist but sometimes attributed to Gheeraerts the Younger c. 1565. (Portrait formerly owned by the Duke of St. Albans, currently in the possession of the Minos Miller Trust Fund.)

I just watched a slickly produced de Vere documentary on Amazon Prime called NOTHING TRUER THAN TRUE, which was not, in my opinion, terribly convincing in regard to the authorship debate, but it was a fascinating look at the 17th Earl of Oxford's grand tour of Italy, and once again I saw the above portrait, supposedly painted by Gheeraerts the Younger, trotted out as a portrait of Edward de Vere. This is not Edward de Vere. Nor was it pained by Gheeraerts the Younger. 

Portrait inscribed, "Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford" (Portrait formerly owned by the Duke of St. Albans, currently in the possession of the Minos Miller Trust Fund. Image from Wikicommons)

And yes, I'm aware there's a giant inscription on the portrait that screams, "I'm Edward de Vere." How many times do I have to tell you? Never. Trust. Inscriptions. And especially never trust them when they are fitted on both side of the sitter's head (as well as behind it) in a manner no painter in England ever employed.  

The portrait shows a man dressed in the garb of the late 1550's to the mid 1560's. We know that English nobles donned their newest European-influenced finery for portraits, so its extremely unlikely (read "impossible") that a clothes horse like Fast Eddie de Vere would be immortalized playing dress up with his daddy's wardrobe, but, again, believe what you need to believe. 

Now let's have a closer look at that diabolical mug that appears to be contemplating your murder in hideous detail. Notice anything uniquely weird about the sitter aside from his cauliflower ear and large slithery-spooky homicidal eyes? 

Yes, correct, there are beaded strings or perhaps yarn attached to the end of his pickavent beard (or possibly attached to the standing collar). That's unusual, but not 100% unique. In fact, I've been able to locate two other portraits that show this same style beaded beard. So let's have a look at those two portraits, both of which immortalize earls, and see what we can glean from them. What do these three earls have in common? 

The portrait below depicts Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester and arch enemy of Edward de Vere dressed with a equally tall standing collar that supports, via the same tabs known as pickadils (ahem), a small figure-eight ruff. Look a bit familiar style-wise to the called Edward de Vere portrait? Now lift up a magnifying glass and you'll see that Dudley also has the exact same type strings, with some type of bell-shaped ornamentation, dangling from his pointy beard (or possibly his collar top). Same clothes style, (minus bishop sleeves), same diabolical glare, same beard style, yet Dudley was painted c. 1560 when Edward de Vere was ten years old. 

Starting to get the picture? 

 Above: Robert Dudley, the First Earl of Leicester c. 1560 by van der Muelin (Yale Center for British Art). Wrist ruffles, jerkin slashed and pinked vertically with long skirt ending in pickadil border. Jerkin (outer jacket) sleeveless and winged with double layer of pickadil tabs. Tall standing collar also ends with pickadils. Sleeves of doublet are tight to skin without bombast padding. Non-peascod doublet attached down center with buttons top/bottom and hooks in center. Codpiece still prominent. Hose paneled, padded for onion-shape. Small figure-of-eight ruff collar worn open at neck (ruff likely attached to shirt as were wrist ruffles). Hair short all around. Beard forked and decorated with beaded strings or yarn. Black squat cap beret-like pleated with ostrich feather.

Okay, now let's examine another portrait that once again reveals a nobleman with stringed baubles dangling off his chin. Who is it this time? Why it's the 7th Earl of Northumberland, Thomas Percy, as painted by Steven van der Muelin (the same artist who painted Dudley). Now our man Percy isn't as dapper as Dudley and can't really pull off that cold-blooded "I'm killing you in my dreams" glare that the other earls manage so effortlessly, but his style of clothing--raised collar, small figure-of-eight ruff--looks rather familiar and of course dates the portrait to early in Elizabeth's reign 1566.

from wikicommons by Steven van der Muelin

Confirmation bias is a funny thing in that people who are aware it exists can still suffer from it. Oxfordians can be extremely reasonable on so many fronts, and yet here we have a portrait of a man who in no way resembles the sitter of the Welbeck portrait of Edward de Vere and is in fact decked out in the clothing of a previous generation; yet otherwise intelligent people will still go onto social media and call me names after I politely inform them it's not their boy Edward de Vere. Why do they throw insults? I guess because they really want it to be Edward de Vere. And I get it. It would make a great diabolical Shakespeare portrait. Except it's impossible. It's not Edward de Vere and therefore it's very likely his father Earl John. End of story. Sorry. The truth hurts sometimes but is worth it. No need to lash out in the comments.

 

If you want to educated yourself on costume dating Elizabethan portraits visit this post on my blog and then we will never have to engage in one of these awkward conversations again. Costume dating is fun! And until you finally learn how to do it you will always be an annoying novice, such as I was for many years, inside the world of Elizabethan portraiture. It will also give you a huge advantage because even inside the refined world of British art very few curators know much about costume dating. It's a great first step. 

 

Note: all the portraits in the post are used for identification purposes under Fair Use Laws. This is an educational blog. Also, go pick on somebody your own size. Or better yet learn to punch up.