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Original Shakespeare Portrait Discovered, Disputed
Reader Hugh Pickens sends in news from the NYTimes a few days back of what is believed to be a 400-year-old portrait of William Shakespeare, painted 6 years before his death. No existing portrait, that most experts consider to be genuine, was captured during Shakespeare's lifetime. "It shows Shakespeare as a far more alluring figure than the solemn-faced, balding image that has been conveyed by previous engravings, busts and portraits. 'His face is open and alive, with a rosy, rather sweet expression, perhaps suggestive of modesty,' said a brochure for an exhibition opening in Stratford. The portrait came to light when Alec Cobbe visited the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2006 to see an exhibition, 'Searching for Shakespeare,' and realized that the Folger portrait, whose authenticity had been doubted for decades, was a copy of the one that had been in his family's art collection since the mid-18th century, with the family unaware that the man depicted might be Shakespeare. Scientific studies at Cambridge showed that the oak panel on which the Cobbe portrait was mounted came from trees felled in the last 20 years of the 16th century, pointing to a date for the painting in the early 1600s." For balance, the New Yorker disputes some of the claims in the NYTimes account, and for good measure tosses in another purported Shakespeare portrait from life, this one discovered 3 years ago in Canada.
That which we call a portrait from any other time period would look as similar.
So this portrait would, were it painted later, retain that dear perfection which it holds without that title.
is WAY too real.
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That's not Shakespeare, it's clearly Sir Francis Bacon.
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
That's totally Photoshopped. I can see the streak marks.
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Translation : I've been dead for 500 years, and I've written all this great stuff. Why do you care what I looked like? Go read a book, stop looking at me.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
In the end, we will never know exactly what he looks like, but we do have a pretty good idea.
And it's a pity someone so talented did not write an autobiography... at least then we could have looked at the dust jacket inside the back cover...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
I can tell from the brushstrokes and having seen a few 'shops in my time.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
An elaborate fake perhaps, but still a fake. Yes, the frame is made from trees from the period but the only difference between the canvas and existing paintings is that this time the man has a beard and features painted in a different light.
Even a moderate understudy of art could have produced this.
Or, doth mine eyes deceive me?
.
The article uses 400, rather than 500, years, so the summary is wrong. And why is your post modded funny instead of informative?
Shakespeare? Isn't he the guy that invented the ball-point pen?
.... this is the earliest recorded instance of "Pics or it didn't happen".
Have gnu, will travel.