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

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.