The following BBC News Magazine article on the Shakespeare portrait ran March 11.
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Why is this the definitive image of Shakespeare? |
A newly authenticated portrait
of William Shakespeare sheds new light on the playwright, but where does it leave the enduring Droeshout image that's so familiar?
Suddenly Shakespeare does not look how we imagined.
Gone are the receding hairline and the tired eyes, replaced by a man flush with youth and good health. Even his nose and chin are jauntily pointed.
The discovery of what's believed to be the only portrait of Shakespeare painted in his lifetime – found in the Cobbe family collection – means the Martin Droeshout image so embedded in our collective consciousness has a rival.
Droeshout's brass engraving is the title portrait on the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, the First Folio published in 1623, seven years after the playwright's death . . .