March 10 2009. Stanley Wells proclaims "This is the face of Shakespeare." With the imminent release of Anne Henderson's "Battle of Wills" about the Canadian Sanders portrait, the timing of Wells announcement takes on the flavour of a pre-emptive strike. Read the NY Times story here.
Cobbe Portrait 'Not A Genuine Likeness' Of William Shakespeare Made From Life
ScienceDaily (Apr. 22, 2009) — Working with four specialists, Professor Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, a Shakespeare scholar at the University of Mainz, has refuted the claim of the picture restorer and owner Alec Cobbe that the "Cobbe portrait", in his family's possession for centuries, is a genuine life-portrait of William Shakespeare. Read the Science Daily story here.
Spare us more Shakespeare 'portraits' - even then no one cared what the playwright looked like
April 13, 2009. Germaine Greer - If you were to turn out the attic of your ancestral home and find a genuine 17th-century portrait of a man, there is little chance that the subject would be a playwright, let alone William Shakespeare. In the last decades of the 16th century, and the first decade of the 17th, there was little demand for the likenesses of dramatists, no matter how popular or prolific. Read the Guardian.co.uk story here.
March 18, 2009. Katherine Duncan-Jones demolishes Stanley Wells' case for the Cobbe portrait as an image of Shakespeare. Read the TimesOnline story here.
The Cobbe portrait is now the official face of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
As its Chairman, Stanley Wells defends the decision: "The evidence that it represents Shakespeare and that is was done from life, though it is circumstantial, is in my view overwhelming, I feel in little doubt that this is a portrait of Shakespeare, done from life and commissioned by the Earl of Southampton."
The Current Champion
The Chandos: National Portrait Gallery portrait #1. This is the painting most often identified with Shakespeare. It is said to have been owned by William Davenant, whose parents knew Shakespeare. Critics have found it hard to believe that the sitter was of English yeoman stock.
