Cobbe Portrait - History

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 London's National Portrait Gallery; it bore a striking resemblance to the one owned by his family. The Janssen painting had long been claimed to be Shakespeare; however, when overpainting was removed in 1988, it was discovered that the hairline had been altered, apparently to make it look more like the standard engraved Droeshout image of Shakespeare with a high, balding forehead. 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. Nevertheless the catalogue asserted that this was simply a guess.

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. According to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, "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." The full evidence was published in the catalogue of the 2009 exhibition Shakespeare Found in Stratford-upon-Avon.

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. If verified, the Cobbe portrait would become the second portrait of William Shakespeare possibly painted from life.