GARDEN & GUN MAGAZINE REVIEW OF STALKING SHAKESPEARE

Turning a Blind Eye: The Unton Memorial Portrait Reconsidered

 Above: NPG 710 Called Sir Henry Unton Memorial Portrait (artist unknown)   

Turning a Blind Eye: the Unton Memorial Portrait Reconsidered

"Although retouching and overpainting are very extensive, microscopic examination implies that the original paint layers are in reasonable condition . . ."  NPG file Unton Memorial Portrait

Part One: This Is Not Sir Henry Unton

I first came across the NPG memorial picture about eight years ago while sitting in the Elizabethan garden outside the Folger Shakespeare Library in DC. Waiting for the library to open, I had just turned a page on Roy Strong’s book The Cult of Elizabeth when I saw a portrait I assumed depicted Will Shakespeare. The large bust centered in the portrait seemed to combine elements from his Chandos portrait with the bust in Stratford’s Trinity Church. (Even Strong acknowledges the bust in the writerly memorial portrait is presented in the style of Shakespeare's.) Posing before a green curtain, this Shakespeare stand-in had been immortalized behind a table bearing inkwell and paper while in the act of writing. Stranger yet, the Angel of Fame was blowing her trumpet into the sitter's right ear while offering him the Crown of Triumph.  Fame, triumph, curtains, ink, paper, pen, etc, it's no wonder I assumed this dead writer was Shakespeare.

The NPG's memorial portrait, painted on a wooden panel five feet wide by two feet tall, presents the counterclockwise narrative of a man's life moving from birth to funeral rites with all these life episodes orbiting the sitter's central bust. Stranger yet, the sun, located upper right, cast rays of light connecting it to the main sitter in all his incarnations throughout the mural. And although its possible to categorize the portrait, as Roy Strong does, as a “story picture,” this mural is 100% unique. As far as we know, nothing resembling it was created during Queen Elizabeth’s reign. We don't know who painted the portrait, although I'm told the The British Arts Journal will soon publish a paper proposing an artist. 

Nor can we  be certain when the portrait was painted, although its costumes, specifically the figure-of-eight linen ruff collars (which at times appears layered in the bust) would seem to indicate c. c.1580-1600. At other moments in the portrait's narrative these ruffs appear to be fluted in tubular sets. To my eye the costumes presented are such a hodgepodge that attempting to date the portrait by fashion might be a mistake. (Do the costumes in the birth scene reflect the fashion during the year of the sitter's birth or during the time the portrait was painted?) Sir Roy Strong has no such doubts and states with great confidence that the costumes establishes the date of the portrait to be c. 1596, the year of Unton's death, but Strong gives no examples to support this claim in his essay on the mural. 

As to the central bust, the sitter is sporting cuffs at the wrist, so the portrait is very likely post 1583. But what's most interesting--and Strong misses this entirely--is the sham sleeve that is repeatedly seen hanging behind the sitter's left shoulder. The sitter does not appear to be wearing a mandilion with one sleeve hanging fashionably loose; instead he is wearing one jerkin (or jacket) sleeve unbuttoned and purposely hanging loose (thereby exposing the doublet sleeve beneath the jerkin). As Cunngington states in the Handbook of English Costume in the 16th Century, "Thus to wear one [sleeve] and leave the other to hang was the vogue during the 1580's" Yet Strong insists on dating the costume to be 1596. 

Infrared testing reveals the sitter's nose was originally hooked in appearance. The sitter's bushy haircut befits the mid-to-late 1580's (famous for the Armada perm), but, that said, I think the portrait has been too greatly mistreated to date it with any accuracy via fashion.

It has been suggested that the great miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard might have painted the portrait, which includes dozens of tiny courtiers pictured throughout the narrative span. As Strong notes in his essay The Ambassador, these courtiers appear to be depictions of specific people. The various landscapes likewise appear to have been modeled on specific locales distinguished by anomalies (and some of these locals cannot be attached to the known travels of Sir Henry Unton). So what we are left with is a staggeringly precise mural designed for the purpose of identifying and immortalizing a famous writer of great fame and triumph. And this is exactly where our problems begin, because Sir Henry Unton was not famous, he was not a writer of any note, and his life was far, far from triumphant.  

Strong's essay ignores any details that contradict the Unton narrative. His only comment on why the sitter is posing as a writer is that, "He seems the perfect civil servant poised to jot down instructions." It does occur to Strong that "jotting down instructions" is not an act that has historically wooed the Angel of Fame nor has it ever merited a Crown of Triumph. Strong also notes that, "The insert scenes recall the glories attained by the house of Unton under Sir Henry," yet Strong fails to elaborate on what these glories were. (Uton's estate was left in ruins after his death.) The truth is we have a portrait of a famous writer here--that's obvious--but which famous writer is it?

Sir Henry Unton never penned poem, play, masque, history, pamphlet, or novel. And even Strong admits that Unton lived a life of pitfalls and described his own life as “clownish.” So why does the Angel of Fame offer Unton the Crown of Triumph not once but twice in this portrait? And why, in the depiction of the tomb's effigies, is there a statue of a woman--whom Strong identifies as Lady Unton--gesturing with reverence to a pedestal supporting books? Also, why is there a wyvern (a winged dragon) above this tomb when that mythological beast was not associated with the Unton clan or with his wife's family. And why is there another wyvern above the gate to the sitter's house when Unton's heraldic beast was the greyhound? Sir Roy Strong does not provide explanations for any of these mysteries. He simply ignores them.

After leaving DC, I contacted the NPG to purchase some historical photographs of the life portrait. Although none of these photographs were dated—odd since the NPG had bought the picture in 1888—the photos did reveal a history of waning and waxing obfuscation. The black-and-white photograph I purchased appeared to be the oldest in the file and it showed the portrait thickly overpainted especially along its lower section (this being the lone oak panel of the three horizontal planks on which the picture was painted). Everywhere I looked I saw tide lines and abrasions, bubbles and wounds, evidence of rubbings, scrapings, and in-paintings. Even the close-up details that illustrate Strong’s chapter in The Cult of Elizabeth reveal a parade of crude brushwork around the crests behind the tomb’s effigies. The more I studied these details, the more I began to wonder if the entire picture might have been methodically censored to hide the sitter’s identity. (continued after jump)