Art's False Borrowed Face
So the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has decided that the "Cobbe Portrait" is an authentic painting from life of William Shakespeare in 1610.
I don't think so. It doesn't look much like the Droeshout First Folio engraving that we know has to be an authentic likeness (since about 25 people who knew W.S. personally signed off on it), and even less like the "Chandos" portrait that the National Portrait Gallery has (somewhat controversially) proclaimed an authentic portrait from life of the Bard. (Peter Ackroyd likes the Chandos portrait, as does Charles Nicholl.)
The whole case for the Cobbe portrait, as presented, has only four legs, none of them particularly sound.
1. The painting is, if the scientific testing is to be believed, from 1610. That narrows it down not a whit. There were lots of people in 1610 who could afford both a fancy ruff and a portrait. (Shakespeare was, admittedly, one of those people by then.)
2. The Cobbes are distantly connected to the Earls of Southampton, one of whom (the 3rd) was Shakespeare's patron. The key word here is "distantly" -- a Cobbe cousin married the 3rd Earl's great-grand-daughter.
3. The Cobbe "family tradition" identified it as a portrait of Shakespeare. The Cobbe "family tradition" has also identified it as a portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh. Who, quite frankly, it looks a lot more like than it does Shakespeare. (That said, Raleigh was in the Tower of London in 1610.)
4. It is very like the "Janssen portrait" in the Folger Shakespeare Library, which has been identified off and on as Shakespeare. Leaving aside the fact that the Janssen portrait was altered in 1770 to make it look more Shakespeare-y, throwing the whole "identification" into a cocked hat, if the Cobbe is the original, and is from 1610, then it absolutely can't be by Cornelis Janssen, who was only 17 in 1610, and not even living in England at the time. Either the Folger is wrong about everything, or Stanley Wells and the Birthplace Trust are. Either way, its likeness to a painting that it debunks is no good argument for its authenticity.
I don't think so. It doesn't look much like the Droeshout First Folio engraving that we know has to be an authentic likeness (since about 25 people who knew W.S. personally signed off on it), and even less like the "Chandos" portrait that the National Portrait Gallery has (somewhat controversially) proclaimed an authentic portrait from life of the Bard. (Peter Ackroyd likes the Chandos portrait, as does Charles Nicholl.)
The whole case for the Cobbe portrait, as presented, has only four legs, none of them particularly sound.
1. The painting is, if the scientific testing is to be believed, from 1610. That narrows it down not a whit. There were lots of people in 1610 who could afford both a fancy ruff and a portrait. (Shakespeare was, admittedly, one of those people by then.)
2. The Cobbes are distantly connected to the Earls of Southampton, one of whom (the 3rd) was Shakespeare's patron. The key word here is "distantly" -- a Cobbe cousin married the 3rd Earl's great-grand-daughter.
3. The Cobbe "family tradition" identified it as a portrait of Shakespeare. The Cobbe "family tradition" has also identified it as a portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh. Who, quite frankly, it looks a lot more like than it does Shakespeare. (That said, Raleigh was in the Tower of London in 1610.)
4. It is very like the "Janssen portrait" in the Folger Shakespeare Library, which has been identified off and on as Shakespeare. Leaving aside the fact that the Janssen portrait was altered in 1770 to make it look more Shakespeare-y, throwing the whole "identification" into a cocked hat, if the Cobbe is the original, and is from 1610, then it absolutely can't be by Cornelis Janssen, who was only 17 in 1610, and not even living in England at the time. Either the Folger is wrong about everything, or Stanley Wells and the Birthplace Trust are. Either way, its likeness to a painting that it debunks is no good argument for its authenticity.