The Cobbe portrait is an early Jacobean panel painting of a gentleman which has been argued to be a life portrait of William Shakespeare. It is displayed at Hatchlands Park in Surrey, a National Trust property, and the portrait is so-called because of its ownership by Charles Cobbe, Church of Ireland (Anglican) Archbishop of Dublin (1686–1765). There are numerous early copies of the painting, most of which were once identified as Shakespeare.
The Cobbe original was only identified in the collection of the Anglo-Irish Cobbe family in 2006, and had until then been completely unknown to the world. Evidence uncovered by researchers at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust led to the claim, presented in March 2009, that the portrait is of William Shakespeare and painted from life. Many scholars dismiss this theory and have provided evidence to identify the portrait as one of Sir Thomas Overbury.
The portrait has been the centrepiece of two exhibitions dedicated to it: Shakespeare Found: a Life Portrait at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon, from April–October 2009 and The Changing Face of William Shakespeare at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York, from February–May 2011. An illustrated catalogue provides details of the painting and its provenance.Stanley Wells, editor. "A Life Portrait at Last: Portraits, Poet, Patron, Poems", The Cobbe Foundation and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, 2009.
Support
Support for the identification as a portrait of Shakespeare is drawn from several strands of evidence:
The portrait descended in the Cobbe family together with a portrait of Shakespeare's patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton – and they were inherited by Archbishop Cobbe through his cousin's wife, Southampton's great-granddaughter, who inherited Wriothesley heirlooms. At least five early copies of the Cobbe portrait have long traditions as representing Shakespeare: in the case of one of them, the 'Janssen' portrait in the Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, D.C.), the tradition is claimed to date to within living memory of Shakespeare. This is one of the longest Shakespeare traditions attaching to any oil portrait. Furthermore, the existence of so many early copies indicates that the sitter was a man of fame. The Cobbe portrait is inscribed with the words Principum amicitias!, meaning 'the alliances of princes!', a quotation from Horace in an ode addressed to a man who was, among other things, a playwright (see below). The Cobbe portrait, and even more so the Janssen copy, bears a compositional similarity with the Droeshout engraving published in the First Folio of 1623. The original or copy may have been a source for the engraving. Scientific testing has shown that the portrait is painted on a panel of English oak sometime after 1595; the form of the collar suggests a painting date of around 1610. Both the Cobbe portrait and the Janssen copy received alterations, in particular to the hairline. In the Cobbe original, this alteration made the sitter look younger, and the copies of the Cobbe received this younger hairline. The later state of the Janssen was significantly aged compared with either version of the Cobbe, suggesting that the alteration was made either late in the sitter's life or after his death. A second "bald" copy of the Cobbe, originally owned by the Marquess of Dorchester, also exists.
The identification has received support from Shakespeare scholars Stanley Wells, Henry Woudhuysen, Jay L. Halio, Stuart Sillars, and Gregory Doran, chief associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and art historians Alastair Laing, curator of paintings and sculpture at the National Trust, and Paul Joannides, professor of Art History at Cambridge.
Supporters of the Shakespeare identification reject the arguments for Overbury. Research using tracings by Rupert Featherstone at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge, has led him to conclude that the Cobbe portrait and the only documented portrait of Overbury in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, depict two different sitters.
Since the publicity surrounding it, the portrait has appeared on the covers of several books, and even inspired the Chinese author Zhang Yiyi to have a series of cosmetic surgeries to have his face transformed into that of Shakespeare.Mid Day, 27 April, 2011
Criticism
The claims about the portrait have also met with considerable scepticism from other Shakespeareans and art experts, including Shakespeare scholar and general editor of the Arden Shakespeare David Scott Kastan, who has questioned the portrait's provenance, and Tarnya Cooper, curator of 16th-century portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, who believes that both the Cobbe and Janssen portraits represent Sir Thomas Overbury. Other scholars have noted numerous differences between the Cobbe portrait and the authentic but posthumous Droeshout engraving that appeared in the First Folio of Shakespeare's works.Title page of the First Folio with Droeshout's engraved portrait of Shakespeare
History The subject of the portrait was unidentified for centuries after passing into the ownership of the Cobbe family some time in the early 18th century.
In 2006, Alec Cobbe viewed the "Janssen portrait", so-called because it was once attributed to the artist Cornelis Janssen. It belongs to Washington's Folger Shakespeare Library, and was on exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery in London; it bore a striking resemblance to the one owned by his family. The Janssen painting had long been claimed to be Shakespeare. However, the state of the painting that Cobbe viewed was not the one that showed the greatest resemblance to the standard engraved Droeshout image of Shakespeare with a high, balding forehead.Folger Shakespeare Library: Janssen portrait The removal of overpainting in 1988 had, in fact, revealed an earlier state with a much younger hairline. Shakespeare's age and date had also been added at some later time.
In the exhibition catalogue the "Janssen portrait" was tentatively identified as a depiction of the courtier, poet and essayist Thomas Overbury. This suggestion dates back to an earlier exhibition in 1964, before the cleaning.David Piper, O Sweet Mr. Shakespeare I'll Have His Picture: The Changing Image of Shakespeare's Person, 1600–1800, National Portrait Gallery, 1964, p.36 Nevertheless, the catalogue asserted that this was simply a guess.Tarnya Cooper (ed), Searching for Shakespeare, National Portrait Gallery and Yale Center for British Art, Yale University Press, 2006, p. 68; The Guardian, "Searching for Shakespeare"
Cobbe sought advice from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Over a three-year period, a research project headed by Stanley Wells and Alastair Laing, performed a number of authentication studies on the portrait. Wells and Laing concluded that sufficient circumstantial evidence exists to announce the project's findings. They also suggested that the "Janssen portrait" was a copy of the Cobbe portrait. As is detailed in the catalogue of the 2009 exhibition "Shakespeare Found", several other early copies of the Cobbe portrait have been located and no less than three of them have independent traditions as portraits of Shakespeare.
In 2006, the National Portrait Gallery concluded that the so-called Chandos portrait was then the only existing portrait painted during the life of Shakespeare.
Proposal of Stanley Wells and collaborators
After extensive infra-red and x-ray test analysis including growth-ring testing of the panel on which the portrait is painted, scientists have estimated that the panel is from around 1610. According to Stanley Wells the portrait has been in the possession of the Cobbe family since the early 18th century and is most likely a portrait of Shakespeare. It, or more likely a copy such as the Janssen, is possibly the source of Martin Droeshout's familiar engraving on the title page of the Shakespeare First Folio (1623). The portrait is thought to have been commissioned by Shakespeare's patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.Katz, Gregory. "The Bard? Portrait said to be Shakespeare unveiled." Associated Press, 9 March 2009. Wells said: The evidence that it represents Shakespeare and that it 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.
In deciding between the Cobbe original and one of its copies as a source for the engraving, Wells draws attention to a greater similarity in the shape of the figure between the engraving and the Janssen copy. Although many details of the doublet and collar are eliminated in the engraving, the angle and length of the arms, the shape of the fabric at the shoulders, and the length of the torso, all show a greater resemblance in the Janssen.
Controversy In a review of the exhibition catalogue edited by Wells, Robert Bearman writes: "It is strongly argued that there is a striking resemblance between the newly discovered portrait (or, rather, a copy) and the Droeshout engraving of Shakespeare, and that the painting might itself have been used by Droeshout." Bearman also expresses scepticism about the link with Shakespeare's patron Wriothesley.Robert Bearman, Shakespeare Quarterly, 60, 4, pp. 483–487 (2009)
Other experts are even more sceptical, and suggest that even the circumstantial evidence is weak. Shakespeare scholar David Scott Kastan also took the view that there were reasons to question the Cobbe portrait's provenance – whether it was in fact once owned by the Earl of Southampton or commissioned by him, as the Trust representatives believe – and to doubt whether the richly dressed man in the portrait was Shakespeare. "If I had to bet, I would say it's not Shakespeare", Kastan said. But even if it were, he said, the traditions of Elizabethan portraiture meant that it would be unwise to conclude that Shakespeare actually looked like the figure depicted in the portrait. "It might be a portrait of Shakespeare, but not a likeness, because the convention of portraiture at the time was often to idealise the subject", he said.
Sir Roy Strong, former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, and a leading scholar of Elizabethan and Jacobean portraiture, has called Wells's claims "codswallop"."A portrait of William Shakespeare? 'Codswallop' says expert", Vanessa Thorpe in The Observer, 19 April 2009 Dr Tarnya Cooper, curator of 16th century portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, also voiced scepticism. While acknowledging that the Janssen portrait and the Cobbe portrait are versions of the same image, she believes it likely that both portraits represent Sir Thomas Overbury. Of Wells's identification of the sitter as Shakespeare, she said, "I respect Wells's scholarship enormously, but portraiture is a very different area, and this doesn't add up."
Writing in The Times Literary Supplement Shakespeare biographer Katherine Duncan-Jones also favours the identification of the subject as Overbury:
An authentic portrait of Sir Thomas Overbury (1581–1613) was bequeathed to the Bodleian Library in Oxford in 1740. This picture bears a startling resemblance to the "Cobbe" painting (and its companions). Features such as a distinctive bushy hairline, and a slightly malformed left ear that may once have borne the weight of a jewelled earring, appear identical. Even the man's beautifully intricate lace collar, though not identical in pattern, shares overall design with "Cobbe", having square rather than rounded corners.Duncan-Jones, Katherine. "Shakespeare Unfound(ed)? The real identity of the sitter for the new 'Shakespeare' portrait", The Times Literary Supplement, 18 March 2009.