Thursday, March 19, 2009

Shakespeare Portrait Update

Shakespeare Unfound(ed)? Katherine Duncan-Jones TLS: "Last week Dr Tarnya Cooper, the sixteenth-century curator at the National Portrait Gallery, declared herself “very sceptical” about Wells’s claim, and remarked that “if anything . . . both works [the Folger and Cobbe portraits] are more likely to represent the courtier Sir Thomas Overbury”. A suggestion made long ago by David Piper that yet another version of the portrait, the “Ellenborough”, is of Overbury, is waved away as “mistaken” by the authors of the brochure. Yet the views of experts such as Cooper and Piper cannot be dismissed so easily."

There's much more to all this, and you can read it at the link.

1 comment:

ShakSan said...

I absolutely agree that the Cobbe painting is of Sir Thomas Overbury.

When you consider the life and murder of Sir Thomas, then the inscription is appropriate.

"Principum amicitias!"

Beware the friendship of kings!