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.

 

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
 
 

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.