"1604" Venice Portrait of Shakespeare Raises Many Questions

 Above: Rawdon Brown's 19th-century sketch of the 17th-century Venice painted portrait of Shakespeare (the painted portrait is now owned by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford) and can be viewed here.) 

A painted portrait of Shakespeare inscribed "21 July 1604" was discovered in Venice in the early 20th century. The portrait somewhat resembled the Droeshout engraving from the First Folio of 1623, our most authentic likeness of the writer, but this Venice Shakespeare was swarthier and shared some similarities to the NPG-anointed Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, considered our most authentic painted portrait (however there is no proof the Chandos even depicts Shakespeare). The Venice portrait differed from both these endorsed likenesses in portraying Shakespeare as portly, though it's possible his doublet was stylishly stuff with bombast. The doublet, with its triple-braid shoulder wings, was also far more regal than the costumes in other portraits of Shakespeare.

And that's about all I've been able to find out about this mysterious Venice portrait of Shakespeare, which was mentioned in a book called James I: The Masque of Monarchy by a author named James Travers in 2003. The above reproduction--with apologies for the low quality--is taken from that book. However the UK's National Archives has a blog post on the sketch in which we learn that the painted portrait was X-rayed in 1969, but that the X-ray results have since been lost. 

It's interesting that the portrait bears a strong resemblance to another portrait owned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the once celebrated Flower of portrait of Shakespeare. The Flower was debunked by the London's NPG in the 20th century, but there are very strange controversies still swirling around the debunking of that once world-famous portrait (these controversies are discussed in detail in my book Stalking Shakespeare Scribner, April 2023.) 

Below find a few choice quotes of interest from that blog post, written by Melinda Haunton and James Travers, on the UK National Archives:

--"Shakespeare writes redolently of Venice, but there is not a jot of evidence he was ever there. Nor was there any particular reason for a portrait of him to be there 300 years after his death, labelled with a form of his name in Italian."
--"The image itself is quite easily explained. It is a pencil copy, made in the 19th century by an antiquarian and archivist, of a 17th century portrait."
--"The Visual Arts Data Service description says that the X-ray taken ‘shows that the head is painted on a separate section of canvas and superimposed on an already existing portrait, itself cut from a larger canvas’. Whatever the reason for this combination of canvases (and Rawdon Brown would not be the only person to be suspicious of the motive), it is highly unusual."
--"One of those listed is the original for the image we’re discussing today. Our sketch is a copy of an extant portrait, now owned by none other than the Royal Shakespeare Company. In the Wikipedia entry, you’ll find it called the ‘Venice’ portrait of Shakespeare."
--"The sketch in PRO 30/25/205 is in one sense absolutely not the face of Shakespeare. It is a competent antiquarian 19th century sketch copy of a 17th or 18th century portrait – even, of two portraits spliced together, whether for reasons of aesthetics or marketing. The tantalizing inscriptions ‘Scoti Lanza’ and the date in 1604 on the original seem at best hopeful additions."

Links:
https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/face-william-shakespeare/
https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/face-william-shakespeare/
https://www.artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-venice-portrait-of-william-shakespeare-15641616-54885
 
 

New Possible Shakespeare Portrait Contains Allusions to Ovid and As You Like It

Portrait of a Gentleman, privately owned (photograph from Bridgeman Images website)

I came across this portrait while rummaging through the website called Bridgeman Images. It was dated in their catalogue c. 1600 by artist unknown. The first detail that caught my eye was the sitter's linen collar (with decorative sun-ray bands) of the same style Shakespeare wore in the authentic Droeshout engraving. The doublet is also similar to the Droeshout's except that the shoulder wings are wider. Then I noticed the banner on the tree behind the sitter, which, taken in context with the sitter's melancholy pose (unkempt collar and hair) inside a pastoral setting called to mind the comedy As You Like It. It was in the mid 1590s that Elizabethan writers took to posing in melancholy disarray, sometimes with their doublets unbutton and the bombast stuffing exposed at the belly.

The banner behind the sitter contains a Latin quote from Ovid's Tristea, "Bene Qui Latuit Bene Vixit." The catalogue entry translates this roughly into, "He who lived hidden lived well." Tristea was Ovid's epistolary lament from exile. We don't know why Ovid was banished by Augustus, although the reason might be hinted at in the epitaph Ovid wrote for himself inside that same poem: "I who lie here, sweet Ovid, poet of tender passions,/fell victim to my own sharp wit."

The portrait has seemingly been scamped with a mound of crude overpaint applied behind the sitter's head. 

Mound of overpainted behind sitter (photo from Bridgeman Image)

Portrait tweaked (lightened) in Photoshop. Note the high bangs, brushed upward with gum, are obscuring something white, perhaps a shield, that is not connected to the banner. There appears to be a rope extended down from our upper left perhaps supporting some sign of heraldry that has been extirpated. Photo from Bridgeman Images.

With all this in mind, this portrait would seem to depict a writer who has been sent into a woodland exile due to the satirical content of his works. Or perhaps it's simply a portrait of a writer who employed a pen name to write satire anonymously. But you get the idea.

The sitter's face and clothing fit (somewhat) into the Chandos group, the early copies of which are considered more valid than the original portrait, but it's hard to make much of the similarities. As far back as 1824, James Broaden called the Chandos "the perhaps most-touched up painting in history."

The Ovid portrait (right, c.1600, Bridgeman Images) and the beautiful Ozias Humphrey's copy of the Chandos (c. 1780, Folger Shakespeare Library). Note the similarities in collar down to the detail of the ties.

Intrigued by all this, I posted the above comparison onto the Facebook group ShakesVere--Edward de Vere, Shakespeare By Another Name, knowing they'd be interested in the portrait, and some insightful suggestions followed, the best of which (in my opinion) was the observation that the sitter bore a good resemblance to the "Wizard" earl Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland. Percy was a patron to Kit Marlowe's at one point so we know he was active in the literary world. Percy was also fond of posing in literary disarray. The comparison below involved a posthumous painting of Percy and therefore might be meaningless.

Unknown Man (left, image via Bridgeman Images) and Henry Percy (right) the 9th Earl of Northumberland, as painted posthumously by van Dyck c. 1641 (Petworth House, image via wikicommons)

It was also suggested the portrait might depict Tom Nashe, a writer who exiled himself from London after his books were burned by Elizabeth I, but as there is only one nondescript cartoon of Nashe, shackled for his offenses against power, it is hard to know if this could be Nashe.

The perhaps larger point is that here we have visual evidence that Elizabethan writers were concealing their identities to protect themselves from the dire consequences of writing satires. One of the aspect I dislike most about the traditional view of Shakespeare is that it erases the courage he constantly demonstrated by satiring the most powerful players in Elizabeth's court. Whoever Shakespeare was he was fearless, but this side of his personality has been ridiculed by traditional scholars who can't explain how a backwoods actor straight out of Stratford got away with satiring power players like Burghley, Cecil, and Queen Elizabeth herself. They have erased his great courage from history.

The Vertue Stratford Bust of William Shakespeare Remains a Beautiful Mystery

Drawing of the Stratford bust in 1734 by George Vertue (Folger Shakespeare Library)

Politicworm has posted an excellent article concerning the antiquarian George Vertue and his strange relationship with Shakespeare portraits. In it, the author argues that Vertue was involved in a plot to sabotage the traditional image of Shakespeare and replace it with another likeness. I can't say whether that's true or not, but it does seem clear Vertue had an active interest in all things Shakespeare, and there's no doubting his authority.

Above is one of my all time favorite renderings of Shakespeare. Vertue drew the Stratford bust in profile inside Stratford's Trinity Church around 1734. This seems odd when you consider that the Stratford bust today looks nothing like this sitter, and in fact this portrait would seem to be based on the Chandos portrait (NPG1) or any number of the very Jewish-looking Shakespeare candidates portraits kept at the Folger Shakespeare Library.  

How did the highly respected Vertue wander into Trinity Church and emerge with this drawing? To even understand this mystery you have to explore the history of hijinks related to the Stratford bust, including the many accusations the original bust was switched or stolen or broken and repaired.   

We know that the Stratford bust was sketched as early as 1636, some 20 years after Shakespeare’s demise, by the antiquarian William Dugdale. When this sketch was later engraved by Hollar for publication in Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), another debate was born, one I will not much dwell on here (an entire book could be filled with its particulars). Suffice to say, the sitter of the Hollar engraving (and two subsequent engravings by other artists) did not at all resemble the bust said to be Shakespeare currently worshiped at Trinity Church.

In 1918 the scholar Charlotte Stopes was the first to point out that either the Dugdale-Hollar representation was incorrect or the bust had been radically modified or replaced.  The battle ranged on, but it wasn’t until 1997 that Diana Price’s article “Reconsidering Shakespeare’s Monument,” offered an intelligent counterargument by stating that 17th century antiquarians were not literalists. I'm not sure I buy that theory, but it's worth considering. 

In 1748 the Stratford schoolmaster Reverend Joseph Greene, who had recently signed as a witness to the planned renovation of the Stratford monument, stole into the chancel with a cohort and made a plaster mould of the bust.  Twenty-five years later Greene confessed his crime while arranging to ship the stolen mould to his brother.  

"In the year 1748 the Original Monument of Shakespeare in the Chancel of Stratford Church was [to be] repair’d & beautifi’d; as I previously consider’d that when that work should be finish’d no money or favour would procure what I wanted, namely a mould from the carv’d face of the Poet; I therefore, with a Confederate, about a month before the intended reparation, took a good Mould in plaster of Paris from the Carving, which I now have by me . . ."

After shipping the stolen mould, which has since been lost, Greene then penned an even stranger letter to his brother in which he disparaged the Shakespeare monument at Westminster and introduced a new player to this drama, Methuselah: 
 
"I think a bust from the Original Monument, as your is [the stolen one], must be much more valuable & satisfactory, than one from his pompous Caenotaph in Westminster Abbey; which . . . though in a venerable & majestic attitude, is more likely to represent Methuselah, than our Poet, who died at the age of 53."
 
Methuselah was Noah’s grandfather who the Torah assures us died at age 969. The Westminster statue portrayed Methuselah, Greene wrote, whereas “our poet” was immortalized in the mould stolen from Stratford, begging the question: did Greene steal his mould because he suspected the Stratford bust was about to be transformed too?

 Good luck solving those mysteries.