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.

GARDEN & GUN MAGAZINE REVIEW OF STALKING SHAKESPEARE

Does the 1608 Play A YORKSHIRE TRAGEDY Contain One of Shakespeare's Greatest Soliloquies?

1608 Quarto of A YORKSHIRE TRAGEDY attributed to "Shakspeare" (Wikicommons). Note the epigram of what appears to be a falcon or hawk capturing another bird in hunt above a mountainous vista. The falcon was the Stratford actor Shakspeare's symbol in his coat of arms. The name of the writer is spelled "Shakspeare," making this two direct references to the Stratford businessman and actor in the frontispiece. It is also advertised on its 1608 cover and "Not so new as Lamentable and True."

In 1608 A YORKSHIRE TRAGEDY was attributed in quarto form to "William Shakspeare" (not "Will. Shake-speare," as the name was typically spelled in print). In the years and decades that followed the play was attributed to Shakespeare (using various spellings of the name) four different times, including when it was registered for publication on May 2, 1608. It was attributed to Shakespeare a second time on the title page of the quarto that soon followed when the play was performed in the Globe. It was attributed to Shakespeare a third time when the quarto was reprinted by Thomas Pavier. And, although it was excluded from the 1623 First Folio, the play did appear in Shakespeare's Third Folio of 1664. In 1685 the play was included in the Fourth Folio. It's also of note that in its original title page the play was advertised as, "Not so new as lamentable and true."

The reason it's described as "lamentable," is that the play was apparently based on an actual murder performed by a squire of the name Walter Calverly who had been forced to marry his guardian's granddaughter.  

Stanley Wells, in his excellent Shakespeare and Co., calls the play "among the finest one-act plays in English." Wells also notes that " . . . nothing in Middleton's output to the date would have prepared one for the possibility that he could have written so powerful a tragedy in this stage of his career."

Yet today scholars assume the play was written by Thomas Middleton even though it seems to have little or nothing in common with the style in which he typically wrote at that time. And the tragedy has a lot in common with how Shakespeare wrote--or at least it does in spells and starts, which might lead a more objective mind to wonder if this play was partially written by Shakespeare and perhaps cobbled together in a way that perhaps can teach us something about Middleton and his influence on Macbeth.

I suspect Shakespeare wrote some of "A Yorkshire Tragedy" mostly because  the play contains one of my favorite Shakespearean soliloquies. The following passage is spoken by a suddenly repentant fallen earl, addressing himself as "thou confused man!" after gambling away his fortune.

The play itself would seem to have been written by at least two different hands. The one in charge of structure was subpar. But the flights of language, at their best, are genius. 

In spite of his stated belief that Middleton did not write in this style, Stanley Wells seems to believe Middleton did somehow pen the tragedy yet remains baffled by a number of problems, including the abrupt changes of tone between the first and second scene. Wells states, "The tone is relaxed, but after this the drama makes a fresh start. . . " Regarding the out-of-place opening scene, Wells speculates, "It could easily have been written after the body of the play had been composed. . . There are many signs that it represented the author very much in the process of hasty composition, writing with the source pamphlet before him, not stopping to polish his verse, and leaving decisions crucial to the play's staging to be sorted out later. I have hunch that Middleton, working with frenzied inspiration, sketched the play from the opening of what is now the second scene, found that it came out far too short for independent performance, embarked upon a process of expansion by writing an introductory scene in a more relaxed manner, decided it didn't work, and as a way of cutting his losses turned the whole play over to a printer who agreed to publish it provide he could say it was by Shakespeare." 

Whew. To this spiel of wild speculation, Wells then adds this gem: "I cannot prove this; but equally, so far as I know, no one can disprove it."

What kind of logic is being dealt to us here? Just for the record, I can speculate that Shakespeare always wrote naked while standing in front of a window and nobody can disprove that either.

So let's touch upon those Macbeth parallels. Wells notes the writing contains "speeches of rare psychological complexity" that bring to mind Macbeth and specifically "the slaughter of Lady Macduff and her children." Macbeth is at times partially attributed to Middleton due to the lifted passages from Middleton's earlier works. And there's obviously a connection between the hideous murder of the nobleman's children here and the murder to Macduff's children in Macbeth. And, once again, it's worth stating that Middleton was not a violent writer in general.

So this play, hideously violent in nature, yet at times stunningly beautiful in language, remains a mystery, one that may never be attributed correctly until we get a better idea of who or what Shakespeare really was.  

I think we can all at least agree that A Yorkshire Tragedy would seem to be a cobbled-together play, the work where occasional genius meets lackey carpenter, but had the play become as well known as Macbeth it certainly would have lifted eyebrows earlier. Did Shakespeare write passages of it? I would argue yes. Did he structure it? I would say no. My guess is that somebody with very little talent but with access to certain passages from Shakespeare cobbled this play together and used Shakespeare's feathers to beautify its nest. 

The Hampton Court Portrait of Shakespeare: How an Examination of Costume Raises Questions

Above: Gustav II Adolf by unknown artist date unknown (left, Gripsholm Castle) & the Hampton Court portrait (Royal Collection, right). All images in this post are for comparison purpose and fall under Fair Use Law (see bottom of post for details). 

I've always rooted for the Hampton Court portrait of Shakespeare to be legit because I like how boisterous, affable, and regal the sitter appears. About a decade ago, following a series of emails I sent the Royal Collection, the curators there agree to X-ray their picture. I am not allowed to post the X-ray radiograph image they kindly sent me, but trust me when I say there were no smoking guns visible, although the radiograph was greatly obscured in many places due to repairs done upon the portrait's cradle and panel.

From the Royal Collection description of the portrait: "The panel is very coarsely painted and repainted, particularly to the head, to enhance the hoped-for likeness to Shakespeare . . . Tree-ring analysis, undertaken in 2010, revealed that that the oak panels on which the portrait was painted derived from the same tree, which was felled after 1616. This suggests the picture was painted sometime after 1621." 

(Note: according to Seeing Through Paintings (Kirsh & Levenson): "Dendrochronologists can determine the date of the felling of a tree but can say nothing about the time needed for dying a panel . . . art historians factor in the drying time by adding a minimum of 2 to 5 years to the felling date.") 

Acquired in 1834 as a portrait of Shakespeare from Penshurst Palace by the "sailor king" William IV, the picture was tested in 1937 with both x-ray and infra-red light by the photographic expert Charles Wisner Barrell, who later reported in the pages of Scientific American that his IR examination had detected a second collar, likely Elizabethan, hidden beneath the Jacobean fountain-fall collar visible on the portrait. (These spectral results disappeared after Barrell's death.) Barrell cited the hidden collar alongside a theory about an obscured sword of state as evidence the portrait had originally depicted Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, the man Barrell believe wrote the works of Shakespeare. 

Above: Welbeck Abbey portrait of Edward de Vere (left) & the Royal Collection's unknown Hampton Court sitter age 34 according to the inscription (right). 

Below: the Folger's Library's Halliwell Phillipps First Unique Proof of Shakespeare (left) a the Royal Collection's Hampton Court Sitter (right).

The Hampton Court's Jacobean fountain-fall collar was created using a commonly used lead-white pigment that X-rays cannot penetrate, so the hidden collar, if it exists, can only be exposed via IR examination, and indeed the X-ray result I studied with my amateur eye showed no hint of a hidden collar--nor would it. The visible collar is certainly compatible with the Royal Collection's Jacobean dating on the portrait (c. 1620-25) and likely dictated that dating (which was established before they tested the wooden panel in 2010). That said, other aspects of the sitter's costume remain vexing if we approach it as English portrait.

Smitten by confirmation bias, I had coasted along with the theory the portrait might depict Shakespeare for many years until one day I came across a portrait of Gustav the Great, king of Sweden from 1611 to 1632. In almost all his portraits, Gustav  proudly displays his royally protruding belly. Gustav's portraits typically show him belted above the belly, or directly over the belly, thereby making portraits of him a bit easier to identify. The rotund belly has long been associated with regal stature.

Above: Gustav II Adolf, c.1630 by Jacob Heinrich Elbfas (Skokloster Castle, left) & the Hampton Court Portrait of Shakespeare (Royal Collection, London, right). Note how the belt buckles, though of different sizes, are identical in shape and strapped across the upper belly.

Even if you disagree about Gustav II being the sitter of the Hampton Court picture, the many portraits of Gustav supply evidence that the Hampton Court costume is neither Elizabethan nor Jacobean. The costume likely isn't even English. The displayed belly of the Hampton Court lends the illusion of a mid 1590s English-style portrait when bombast stuffing was exposed in melancholy disarray via an unbuttoned peascod-bellied doublet, but I suspect this is not a peascod doublet in the Hampton Court picture; instead the sitter is likely wearing a farthingale-type padding that lends the illusion almost of pregnancy.

Above: Gustav II flaunting the same style vented sleeves present in the Hampton Court Portrait. These sleeves could be unbuttoned to hang behind the back. (Gustav II Adolf, 1594-1632, kung av Sverige - Nationalmuseum - 39108, photo via Wikicommons).

Above: Henry Percy, the "Wizard earl," with bombast bared in pose meant to convey melancholy. Painted by Nicholas Hilliard. Image via wikicommons.

 

 

 

 

Above: the bombastic satirist Thomas Nashe shackled by bilboes with doublet undone and bombast displayed c. 1595. Image via wikicommons.

Below are some more comparisons worth pondering.

Above: Gustavus II by Jacob Hoefnagel 1624 (Google Arts Project, left) & the Hampton Court (RC, London, right)

Above: Awesome portrait of Gustav II by Matthaeus Merian the Elder 1631-02 (Google Arts Project, left) & Hampton Court (Royal Collection, right). The portrait on the left was likely painted about four years after the Hampton Court portrait (if we accept the inscribed age of 34 as valid). Note the similar sword hilts and pommels.

Above: Gustav II Adolph date artist and date unknown (Gripsholm Castle, National Museum Sweden) & the Hampton Court portrait (Royal Collection, right)

Above: Gustav II Adolph date and artist unknown (Nationalmuseum, Gripsholm Castle) & the Hampton Court portrait (Royal Collection, right). 

 

Anyone wanting a deeper dive should follow this link to a collection of still-existing costumes once owned by Gustav II, almost all of which reveal the same style jerkin or doublet with longish tapering skirts that come together to form an arrowhead pointing directly to where, decades earlier, we would have found a codpiece. Gustav was also frequently portraited wearing vented sleeves of the type known as hanging sleeves (not to be confused with sham sleeves); this is the same style sleeve found in the Hampton Court picture.

 Below: Costumes of Gustav II displayed in the National Armory in Stockholm. The doublet immediately below is displayed one of the king's rapiers very much resembling the rapier in the Hampton Court picture.

Above: The Hampton Court portrait (Royal Collection, London) displayed beside still existing costumes of Gustav II. Please also note the resemblance of the swords in the two above image.

Anyone interested in Gustav the Great can follow this link to a page featuring an illustrated description of his life. A king who inherited three wars, all of which he fought brilliantly (he's considered one of the greatest military leaders of all time), Gustav is also credited with bringing Sweden into the modern age. He died on the battlefield while leading a charge uphill in the Thirty Days War. If the inscribed age of 34 is correct on the Hampton Court portrait, then it depicts Gustav c. 1628, which would correlate the Royal Collection's dating of the wooden panel. And since Gustav the Great was a Protestant hero, it's almost certain a portrait of him would have existed inside the Protestant stronghold of Penshurst Palace.

So here's to Sweden's Gustav the Great. Though we have lost a poet, we have gained a monarch.

Jokes aside, I don't mean to speak in absolute terms. Obviously this argument is far from over and we won't know the truth until we finally see the IR-test results of the Hampton Court. Will that ever happen? I have no idea.

Note 1: the above argument is abbreviated so as not to overlap too much with my memoir STALKING SHAKESPEARE (Scribner 2023).

Note 2: I often defend Charles Wisner Barrell in my book. I've found him to be reliable and don't mean to disparage him here. I strive very hard to be neutral on the authorship debate whenever it overlaps the portraits rumored to be Shakespeare.

Related links: How To Date Elizabethan Portraits by Costume 

NOTE: ALL IMAGES USED IN THIS POST ARE FOR COMPARISON PURPOSE AND THEREFORE FALL UNDER FAIR USE LAWS. 

 

"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
 
 

A Courtier In White Spurned by Queen Elizabeth I: Is he Raleigh or de Vere?

 Detail from A Courtier and His Lady by Circle of Marcus Gheeraerts (private collection). Photograph taken from a print hung in my living room. I've been going back and forth on this portrait for decades now, but I think I've finally concluded, to my satisfaction at least, who the sitter is. See below post for details.

I have a print of this portrait hung in my living room and for decades now have been debating whether the shunned courtier in white, posing before a powerful woman with her back turned to him, is Sir Walter Raleigh or Edward de Vere. I once wrote a blog post arguing it was Raleigh. Then I began to suspect it was de Vere. And now I've reversed my opinion again and believe it's Raleigh. But there are still a lot of unanswered questions regarding this portrait.

I recently learned from Stella Samaras, a reader of this blog, that a catalogue available from Weiss Gallery ("Tudor and Stewart Portraits 1530-1600") written by Mark Weiss, with the assistance of Sir Roy Strong, attributed this portrait not to Robert Peake but to the circle of Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger and dates the picture to c. 1590-1595. As to this date, my first reaction was surprised that the wrist ruffles didn't cause Weiss to date the picture to 1584 or earlier since ruffles were replaced by cuffs around then. But we will get to that discussion in a moment.

The catalogue states the portrait was at some point "dramatically overpainted." The courtier was scamped with a head of dark hair, a beard, and a hat "so that he better resembled Sir Walter Raleigh." Stranger yet, the woman in the background so resembling Elizabeth I (with her back turned significantly to the male courtier) was overpainted out of the portrait entirely. And the inscription "Sir. Walt. Rawleigh" was added to the upper right corner.   

Note that in the portrait of Raleigh below he has cuffs instead of ruffles. The inscription, if accurate, establishes the portrait was painted in 1588, a few years after wrist ruffles went out of style, so the cuffs fit the inscribed date. As does the bombast stuffing in the bishop sleeves, the giant buttons on the doublet, and the Armada perm. This is in fact a textbook 1588 portrait.

Sir Walter Raleigh (NPG London; image via wikicommons). Note that in this 1588 portrait he was wearing cuffs, not wrist ruffles. If you look into the upper left corner you will see a painting of a moon above the sea, which was an emblem expressing Raleigh's devotion to Elizabeth, the moon goddess Diana who controlled the tides of the sea.

Regarding the woman shunning the courtier, the Weiss catalogue explains, "Closer examination of this figure in black reveals she has reddish hair, wears a coronet and carries a feather fan. . . . Around her neck she wears what is perhaps not just a necklace, but possibly a larger chain denoting an office or order. Could this image be of anyone else other than the Queen herself?"

Well, I think it's fair to assume the woman is Queen Elizabeth, but of course we can't be certain. This raises the question as to why any restorer would paint the queen out of the picture? Was this the act of somebody purposely trying to devalue a portrait or an act of political censorship? This portrait is a narrative and whoever overpainted this woman destroyed the story being told while devaluing the picture. To me that reeks of a political decision, but that is of course speculation. 

Note: The above photograph was taken of the print hung in my living room

I've also assumed, without any real evidence, that the portrait was set in the Tower of London, where the contrite nobleman had been imprisoned by Elizabeth I. (Southampton had a portrait of himself painted in the Tower shortly after he was released, so maybe this courtier did the same.) De Vere was held in the Tower in 1581 for siring a bastard. Raleigh was thrown in the Tower for the first time in 1591 for getting married without permission. So which courtier is depicted? And when was it painted?    

The identification of the painter as "circle of Gheeraerts" might suggest that the portrait was created as a ploy to regain favor with the queen. Sir Henry Lee employed Gheeraerts to this same purpose with the Ditchley portrait of Elizabeth I. Sir Roy Strong once noted that Gheeraert's influence on courtly portraits could be seen as early as 1586.   

Emblem upper right: the moon governing the sea (NPG London image via wikicommons).

Since the portrait in question is privately owned, its identification can best be resolved (if at all) via costume dating. Is the peascod doublet with padded bishop-style sleeves sans wings plus tilted French linen figure-of-eight collar 1581 or 1590?

When I wrote Mark Weiss regarding the portrait, he was kind enough to correct me on a few points. He also mentioned that he was unaware that wrist ruffs went out of style in the early 1580's (and wisely cautioned me that fashion cut-off points were not absolute). Mr. Weiss further stated he would inquire with the costume expert Susan North at the V&A regarding cuffs. I emailed him back an excerpt from a letter already written by Susan North on that subject of wrist ruffles to Barbara Burris (regarding another mystery portrait) that stated in no uncertain terms that ruffles went out of fashion in the 1580's:

"I would agree that the dress does not appear to date from 1611 . . . The general shape of the doublet with close fitting sleeves and a waistline dipping only slightly below its natural place in front corresponds with men’s dress of the 1570’s . . . Regarding your comments on the wrist ruffs, I agree that those go out of fashion in the 1580’s."

So, for a while at least, I was left believing it might be de Vere pictured in the Tower c. 1581, but since then two things changed my mind. The first was that I came upon a portrait of Raleigh at the National Portrait Gallery of Ireland wearing very similar type wrist decorations in 1598.  (One likely mistake I made was assuming these were wrist ruffles when they were, strictly speaking, extensions of a wavy transparent linen fabric more like a fall collar.) Then I realized how small Raleigh's thumbs were, almost baby thumbs. That same tiny thumb is clearly visible in our mystery portrait. (Many thanks to Graham Appleyard for pointing out the childlike size of the hands in the comments section.) This, to me, was the deciding factor: the tiny thumb pointed at Raleigh.

 But, again, that's hardly conclusive evidence.

One other consideration is the buttons on the doublet appear to be decorated with seed pearls, and pearls were a personal symbol for Raleigh that turn up in many of his portraits (see below example). However I haven't been able to confirm these are seed pearls on the buttons. If they are, then that's would seem to settle the matter.

Sir Walter Raleigh by William Seger 1598 (National Portrait Gallery Ireland, image via wikicommons). In this portrait Raleigh's costume is fabulously decorated with pearls. His wrist extensions are a transparent stached linen similar to those worn by the Courtier in White.

It's worth noting that the glove visible in the portrait is not a gauntlet. Gauntlets, with their large and decorated wrist coverings, came into fashion in the 1590's. So there's still confusion about when the picture was painted, but I suspect it's Raleigh. The confirmed 1598 portrait of Raleigh shows a courtier much older looking than the unknown courtier in white. With all this in mind, I have to agree with Mark Weiss that this is likely a portrait of Raleigh c. 1592. That date coincides with Raleigh's release from the Tower of London. The portrait might well have been a gift to Elizabeth designed to show repentance and/or gratitude.

Above: This portrait of Horace Vere by G. Glower from 1594 (image from wikicommons) shows an nearly identical jerkin as that worn by the Courtier in White. There are no wings at the shoulder and the peascod bulge is extended. White was the fashionable color for the later years of Elizabeth's reign.

See also the post: 20 Essential Questions To Ask When Attempting To Date An Elizabethan Portrait By Costume. 
 

Special thanks to Stella Samaras for setting me straight about the Weiss Gallery write up and also to Graham Appleyard for pointing out the child-like hands of the sitter. 

Below: the controversial Ashbourne Portrait of Shakespeare mid-cleaning 1988 (Folger Shakespeare Library, left) & Gheeraerts' Courtier in White (private collection, right)

Above: ruffles instead of cuffs plus a glove lacking a gauntlet

The Folger Shakespeare Library owns the Ashbourne portraits seen above.