RELIGION and the ARTS

Religion and the Arts 13 (2009) 122135

www.brill.nl/rart

Review Essay
A Question of Authenticity

Thomas Merriam
Basingstoke, England

Cooper, Tarnya, ed. Searching for Shakespeare. London: National Portrait Gallery, 2006. Pp. 239 + 190 illustrations. $60.00 cloth. Hammerschmidt-Hummel, Hildegard. The True Face of William Shakespeare: The Poets Death Mask and Likenesses from Three Periods of His Life. Trans. Alan Bance. 2006. English Ed. London: Chaucer Press, 2006. Pp. 208 + 130 illustrations. $40.00 cloth. * n reviewing Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummels Die Verborgene Existenz des William Shakespeare (Religion and the Arts 7 [2003]: 173), I looked forward to reading the book which has now been translated as The True Face of William Shakespeare. This lavishly illustrated volume presents the case for the Shakespearean authenticity and importance of the plaster of Paris death mask in Darmstadt, thought to have been taken to Germany in 1775 by Count Franz Ludwig von Kesselstatt.1 The death mask displays
On the back of the mask there is inscribed the date +AoDm 1616. For about one hundred and fty years scholars have speculated when and how the mask could have come to Germany (cf. Thoms 227228). The British anatomist, Professor Richard Owen (1804 1892) of the British Museum, who had the mask in safe-keeping at the BM for about a decade, examined it thoroughly and concluded that it must be authentic (cf. Schaafhaussen 2649, 41, quoted H-H 3234). [Here and hereafter all parenthetical page references to H-H are to The True Face under review here, not to the other texts by HammerschmidtHummel listed below in Works Cited.] Owen would have purchased it for the Museum, if it could have been proven that any member of the Kesselstatt family had been in London (cf. Elze 308326, 313, quoted H-H 34). Owen advised Dr. Ernst Becker, secretary to
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/156852908X388331
1)

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an enlarged and protuding left eye-lid (H-H 73), which Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel sees as one of a number of developing medical symptoms in three other representations of Shakespeare: the Chandos portrait in the National Portrait Gallery in London (26 and 79), the Flower portrait as restored by Nancy Stocker in 1979 (29, 144, and 146 left), and, more controversially, the bust of Shakespeare known as the Davenant bust in the Garrick Club of London (31). The rst pillar of the authors argument is the comparative forensic examination of the four contenders for authenticitythe death mask (1616), the painted Chandos portrait (conventionally dated 16001610), the painted Flower portrait (1609), and Davenant terra cotta bust (unknown date)by Reinhardt Altmann and his associates of the Federal Criminal Police Oce of Germany (BKA) in Wiesbaden (19951998). The Droeshout First Folio engraving (1623) and the funerary bust of Shakespeare in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon (most probably sculpted not later than a year after the poets death), both serving as the basis for these tests, were critically examined by the author against the background of their cultural historical context. They proved to be credible images of the poet made from likenesses created during his lifetime, or immediately after his death. It should be noted that current thinking regards the death mask, pursuant to Marion Spielmanns 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica article, as spurious; the Chandos portrait as possibly authentic, despite Spielmanns disagreement; the Flower portrait as a nineteenth-century copy of the Droeshout engraving; the Droeshout as an approximate representation of Shakespeare, passively conrmed as a likeness by Ben Jonson, John Heminge, and Henry Condell several years after his death; and the Davenant bust as an idealized portrait by Roubiliac in the eighteenth century. Accordingly, the forensic techniques used by Altmann might be expected to associate the Chandos portrait, the Droeshout engraving, and the Flower portrait for reasons given, but exclude the death mask and the Davenant bust.
Prince Albert and brother of the late Ludwig Becker (Ludwig had found the mask in Mainz in 1849, years after the late Count Kesselstatts art collection had been auctioned), to search for the missing link, i.e., to inquire whether any Count Kesselstadt [sic] had ever stayed in England (Schaahausen 42). In June 1995, Hammerschmidt-Hummel presented documentary evidence for the missing link. In a manuscript history of the Imperial Counts von Kesselstatt at Kesselstatt Castle near Trier (Germany) she discovered the relevant entry, indicating that Count Franz Ludwig von Kesselstatt (17531841), the rst known owner of the mask, had himself traveled to England in 1775 (see H-H 117, g. 098).

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The techniques used by Altmann are based (a) on general identication skills he acquired in the course of criminal investigations and (b) on the BKAs techniques, one of which is somewhat unfortunately rendered in English as Trick Image Dierentiation Technique. In this case, television imaging, scaling and montage are used to juxtapose halves of two dierent facial images along chosen separating lines to establish identity or not. According to the BKA experts this procedure has proved its value over decades, and has never yet failed (H-H 49). In the case of the Chandos, Flower, and Droeshout, all showed correspondences that were a perfect t, seamless joins and convincing harmonies (H-H 51). The same and similar techniques were applied to three-dimensional images of the Stratford funerary bust, the Darmstadt death mask, and the Davenant bust. The funerary bust and the death mask showed remarkable agreement (H-H 52, g. 032), as did the Davenant bust in comparison with the Droeshout engraving, the funerary bust, and the death masks, and the Chandos and Flower portraits as well. The BKA specialist concluded that in every case one and the same person is represented, i.e., William Shakespeare (H-H 52, 56). It must be said that this vital part of Hammerschmidt-Hummels thesis hangs upon the validity of the skill and techniques used by Reinhardt Altmann and other experts. In his review of The True Face of William Shakespeare for the Times Literary Supplement Peter Beal expressed his skepticism: The results of the technical procedures applied to them [the juxtaposition of photographs] are undoubtedly interesting, but one wonders whether they are any more conclusive when applied to facial images than when applied to handwriting samples. Resemblances might be spotted in both instances, but unless a very wide range of examples can be testedto distinguish peculiar idiosyncrasies from similarities that are purely generic and more widespreadthen percentages of likelihood cannot really be gauged. . . . The limitation of the selection itself, as well as the scope for digital manipulation, may perhaps enable researchers to nd whatever they want to nd. One point which Beal makes concerns so-called negative checks. With the exception of the rejections of the so-called Sanders, Jansen (possible), and Grafton portraits by Altmann, the reader of The True Face must take on trust the ability of Trick Image Dierentiation Technique to reject false identications. In light of the examinations of the Federal Criminal Police

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Oce of Germany, this trust is not unreasonable. The partially related facial compositing software is available to law enforcement agencies only, and therefore constitutes a black box for the general reader, unable to evaluate fully the striking illustrations of matches (H-H 5155, 6971). A radical criticism of the use of forensic techniques in the applications presented in The True Face was expressed by Dr. Tarnya Cooper of the National Portrait Gallery in London in the book by her under review here. Portraits are not, and can never be forensic evidence of likeness.2 This opinion would not presumably be shared by agencies which use photographs for identication such as the British Identity and Passport Service, which is currently prepared possibly to spend billions of pounds on identity card contracts. Even hand-drawn and painted portraits have been employed for identication, notably Holbeins portrait of Anne of Cleves and the facial composites used by the FBI; moreover, according to Wikipedia, . . . the FBI maintains that hand-drawing is the correct method to construct a facial composite (Facial Composite). Nor did Shakespeare himself subscribe to Dr. Coopers view. Speaking of the statue of Hermione by that rare Italian master Julio Romano, Paulina says to Leontes, prepare/to see the life as lively mockd as ever/still sleep mockd death (The Winters Tale 5.3.1820). The purpose of a death mask was to provide a sculptor with a template from which to create a funerary bust. The bust in this case is that of Shakespeare on the left wall of the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. In his standard comparison of images, the BKA specialist established ve similarities and two divergences between the mask and the bust (the reason for the divergences, Hammerschmidt-Hummel conjectures, is damage to the funerary bust by the Puritans during the English Civil War). With respect to the Chandos, Flower, and Droeshout portraits, he found seventeen facial features in agreement. The second pillar of the argument of The True Face is the medical evidence:
2) This and the following quotation from the same page in Coopers study continue in a way that would appear to be directed at Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel: Painted, engraved and sculpted portraits are artistic creations ltered through the interests of the sitter, and the skills and style of the artist. Likeness in portraiture is also subject to the peculiarities of technique and specic conventions of representation of a given period. Portraits are not, and never can be, forensic evidence of likeness, and comparison based upon the measurements of facial proportions of portraits does not therefore enhance our understanding of the various putative images of Shakespeare (56).

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In the Droeshout engraving, the Chandos portrait and the Flower portrait I noticed in January 1995 a conspicuous, clearly pathological protuberance on the left upper eyelid which had never been remarked upon before, in spite of the intensive examination of the pictures by many (art) experts in the past. (68) Although the Darmstadt death mask shows an enlarged left eyelid, which might seem to the non-expert to be partly an accident of the molding process, the Droeshout engraving has doubtfully a conspicuous, clearly pathological protuberance on the left upper eyelid. And despite remarking that the symptom is particularly marked on the left in all three portraits (68), the author appears to contradict this by stating that the associated caruncular tumor is missing from the Droeshout engraving, as the ophthalmologist expressly noted in his expert medical appraisal (68). The caruncle is the small, red portion in the nasal corner of the eye. Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel proceeds to argue that the absence of the caruncular tumor from the Droeshout engraving indicates that it was copied from the Flower portrait, rather than vice versa. It is, of course, impossible for an engraving to be done from life, as no sitter would spare the time needed by an engraver, and no engraver could eye-ball the sitter while etching the plate. Schoenbaum thought that the engraver probably worked from a line drawing supplied to him (cited H-H 90). Although it would not seem impossible for an engraver to reproduce such ne distinctions as the relative size of the eyes caruncle, Droeshout did not depict this detail. A later painting, based on the Droeshout engraving, would not have been likely to invent the pathological symptoms seen in the Flower portrait. Hence, the author reasoned that the Flower portrait precedes the engraving and must have been painted from life.3 Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel cites the medical reports of ve experts. The ophthalmologist Professor Walter Lerche, for example,
3) There are anomalous features in the left eye: the caruncle in the corner of the eye and the upper eyelid. When I visited Charlecote Park on 3 September 2007 to inspect the marble copy of the funerary bust in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, I saw more clearly than one can in H-H 78, g. 069, a small round socket, two or three millimeters wide, in the nasal corner of the left eye (not in the right eye) which uncannily matches the one shown in the Flower portrait details (H-H 146, gs. 115c and 116c). The similar feature can be seen in the Berlin copy of the Darmstadt death mask (H-H 77, g. 066) and in the dark hole in H-H 80, g. 074 in the enlargement of the nasal corner of the left eye of the death mask itself.

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reported in his Shakespeare Portraits of April 1995 that the swelling on the upper eyelid, was indeed a pathological symptom, probably the Mikulicz Syndrome, with is a disorder in the area of the tear glands (cited H-H 68). Yet when the author of this review showed the reproduction of the 1979 restored Flower portrait (H-H 29 and 144) to a retired consultant hematologist, he failed to detect any conspicuous medical symptom, including the swelling on the forehead. He did say that he would have to make an examination with his hands to evaluate the possibility of such abnormalities properly. On seeing the Darmstadt death mask, he remarked that a tumor would ordinarily be globular or rounded, and not show the angular cusp in the photograph (H-H 33). As time was limited, this specialist was not shown further photographs on which to base a comprehensive assessment. When the author of this review also showed the Flower portrait (H-H 144) to a pediatric specialist, after a minute of concentrated perusal, she gave a diagnosis of ptosis or bilateral drooping of the upper eyelid, more pronounced in the left than the right eye, associated with a large forehead and early baldness, and possible muscular weakness in neck and legs. The condition tends to increase with age. Early baldness would be applicable to the Chandos portrait (H-H 26) which Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel dates between 1594 and 1599 (88, 91 and 133). A cursory examination by two non-specialists hardly constitutes an evaluation of the medical evidence. It does, nevertheless, go beyond the scope of Peter Beals concluding recommendation in his TLS review: By all means, let readers engage with this book and make up their own minds. Furthermore, if hesitation exists concerning the symptoms and diagnosis on the part of those with medical training, it is dicult to agree with the author that the protuberance on the left upper eyelid is conspicuous in all cases. The True Face can be recommended as a work to stimulate discussion among medical students and specialists. * Readers of Religion and the Arts may recall the reproduction of the Flower portrait on the cover of Volume 71/2 (2003) and the remarkable X-ray study of the same portrait made by the London Courtauld Institute of Art in 1966 (Merriam 169). The author of The True Face gives an account of the paintings provenance, traceable with certainty only to the early nineteenth century (8890). It was purchased by H. C. Clements of Peckham Rye around 1840. He attached a note to the painting declaring it to be the

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original from which the 1623 Droeshout engraving was copied.4 While in Clements possession, it was displayed publicly at the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 and in 1873 at the Alexandra Palace in London, where it suered damage from a re which destroyed the building. Purchased then in 1892 by Edgar Flower, it was donated by Mrs. Flower to the Memorial Gallery of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1895. It was cleaned, restored, and examined by experts of the day who were convinced of its authenticity and that of the date in the upper right-hand corner, 1609. The noted Shakespearean Sidney Lee declared that the Droeshout frontispiece to the First Folio must have been based on the Flower portrait. This opinion held until the publication of Marion H. Spielmanns seminal article for the eleventh edition of the Britannica in 1911. From this time on, Spielmanns opinion prevailed and was supported by the inuential authority of Samuel Schoenbaum in the twentieth century. Although Marion Spielmann suspected that another painting lay hidden behind the portrait of Shakespeare, possibly of the Dark Lady herself, the Courtauld Institutes X-ray in 1966 revealed that it was an Italian Madonna with Christ Child and Saint John the Baptist, probably dating from the fteenth or early sixteenth centuries.5 The under painting bears some resemblance to Leonardo da Vincis Madonna of the Rocks. In the Flower portrait, reproduced in The True Face (28) as it appeared to the unassisted eye, there is no indication of an under painting. All this, however, changed with the further cleaning and restoration of the Flower portrait in 1979 by Nancy Stocker of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Arcs of the three haloes of the Virgin, Christ, and John were left visible along with a cross on the left and a shoulder segment of a rose-colored robe on the right (H-H 29). Spielmann himself described the condition of the panel on which the portrait was painted as a worm-eaten panel of English elm (The Title-

4) It is possible that the early nineteenth-century owner H. C. Clements may have had some knowledge of the paintings recent production, though he claimedaccording to the scholar Samuel Schoenbaumthat the painting had been presented to him by a descendant of the Shakespeare family. The early owner may also have attempted to fabricate a celebrated pedigree for the picture . . . (Cooper 74). Schoenbaum stated that the dealer who sold the painting to Clements was unnamed and that the idea that the dealer was descended from Shakespeares family was a legend (334). 5) Without having had the age of the wood tested, Professor Cooper (72) gives the date as 15401560.

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Page 36, cited H-H 154 n. 93),6 an important testimony in light of what was to follow. Paul Bertram and Frank Cossa (95) came to the same conclusion in 1986: If the painting does in fact date from 1609, it is of course one of the worlds greatest treasures, perhaps the only surviving portrait of Shakespeare from life. If on the other hand it was painted after 1623, it is unique among fakes [. . . and . . .] constitutes one of the most intriguing and inexplicable deceptions in English art history. (cited H-H 30) Leap forward to the 22 April 2005, the eve of the anniversary of Shakespeares death 389 years before. The BBC news announced that, after a four-month examination of the Flower portrait by the National Portrait Gallery in London, Chrome yellow paint, dating from around 1814, had been found embedded in the portrait. It was therefore a fake, but not apparently the uniquely inexplicable deception referred to by Bertram and Cossa. Rather, according to the Royal Shakespeare Company curator, David Howells, it was a work giving great insight into the rebirth of interest in Shakespeare in the nineteenth century (Shakespeare Portrait). In her book under review here, Searching for Shakespeare, which originated as the catalogue of the exhibition of the same name held 2 March 29 May 2006 in London and 24 June27 September 2006 in New Haven, Dr. Tarnya Cooper, Sixteenth Century Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, took a somewhat dierent tack, writing without reproach of the reasonably accomplished artist who appeared quite explicably to have taken considerable care to ensure the painting was taken seriously as a lifetime portrait of the playwright (72).7 She went on to call the painting, albeit a fake, . . . a fascinating object; a testament to the earnest desire to nd a lifetime portrait of Englands most famous poet and playwright (74). That the paintings date of 1609 was a deception in the apparent interest of being taken seriously was not remarked upon. Coopers study
Cooper has a dierent explanation, writing that The wooden panel has been tentatively identied as poplar wood, which was commonly used by artists in southern Europe during the Renaissance (72). 7) By contrast, according to Spielmann, it was the work of a comparatively unskilful craftsman. Considerable care to ensure the painting was taken seriously would, according to Dr. Coopers scenario, include combining features of the Droeshout engraving with the unlikely tiny detail of the socket in the left eye observed in the Charlecote Park marble bustor possibly the Chandos portrait where it can also be seen. See note 3 above.
6)

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also addressed, if somewhat obliquely, the assertion that the painting was a nineteenth-century fraud, illustrating two separate locations from which cross sections at 400 magnication were taken from the Flower portrait, one of which shows The nineteenth-century pigment chrome yellow is well integrated into the lower yellow layer proving they were painted at the same time (Cooper 75). Following this discovery, Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel did not question the validity of the microscopic paint test, but argued that that the NPG had tested a copy, not the original Flower portrait which Nancy Stocker had cleaned and restored in 1979. Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummels suspicions had been aroused in the autumn of 2002 when her German publisher, Philipp von Zabern, received from Stratford a color transparency of the Flower portrait which diered from the Ektachrome (true color) provided to her in 1996 by Brian Glover, then director of the Royal Shakespeare collection. In an appendix to The True Face both color reproductions are printed opposite each other for comparison (144 and 145). As with all color reproductions in books, it is not possible to judge exact tints because of variations in printing delity. The 1996 reproduction (H-H 144) shows a whitish face with conspicuous pock marks on the lower left side of the face (or right, as one looks at the face). These are due to the aking away of paint with age. By contrast, the 2002 reproduction (H-H 145) has a smooth smoky-pink facial coloring. The pock marks are replaced by more uniform grayish speckles. The most striking alteration is the disappearance of a well-delineated cusp of cloth material beyond the collar on the right side from the observers viewpoint. The 2002 reproduction shows the cusp partly lled in with color matching the pink of the cloth which presumably belongs to the under painting of the Virgins rosecolored robe.8 Reinhardt Altmann opined that the more recent reproduction was that of a copy of the old painting, while Professor Wolfgang Speyer, an Austrian expert on old masters, thought that the original painting had been repainted (H-H 147). The 1996 and 2002 versions can be exactly scaled to each other. Their proportions are the same. Hildegard HammerschmidtAs reported by Dalya Alberge in the London Times (25 October 2007), the RSC and NPG have said that any perceived dierences between photographs are likely to be caused by dierences in lighting conditions and dierent equipment. In the newspaper reproduction of the two photographs which appear in The True Face (144 and 145), this dierential feature is not discernible, as the versions have been cropped on the right, thus excluding the rose-colored cusps.
8)

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Hummel saw at rst hand the original Flower portrait (144) in July 1996 with Brian Glover and Prue Dunne of the Royal Shakespeare Company present. The author therefore wrote to the new curator of the Stratford Gallery in 2003 to ask whether the painting had undergone any changes since she saw it in 1996. David Howells wrote back on 12 January 2004 to say that the Flower portrait had not been altered since the 1979 cleaning and restoration in Oxford. After the publication of The True Face, however, he wrote to the author in July 2006, saying that he had overlooked a report of 1994 which showed that some reinforcement of the upper left-hand side of the painting had been done to hold the aging panel together. No restoration work was involved. It may be noted that this repair was made before Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel viewed the painting in 1996 and would not have aected the appearance of the portrait. Following the return of the Searching for Shakespeare exhibition from the United States in the autumn of 2006, Hammerschmidt-Hummel inspected the portrait in Stratford on 26 January 2007. With permission of the present curator, David Howells, she measured the painting and reported her ndings to the author (in a private communication) as follows: Height left: 590 mm. Height right: 588 mm. Width top: 436 mm. Width bottom: 440 mm. Coopers Searching for Shakespeare gives the dimensions as Height: 590 mm or 23 inches. Width: 445 mm or 17 inches (72). There is an average discrepancy of seven millimeters (slightly over a quarter of an inch) in the widths, with the portrait on display in 2007 narrower than the dimensions given in the exhibition catalogue. The portrait on display in 2007 would measure 23 by 17 instead of 23 by 17 inches. Although the discrepancy is small, it is one which could be remarked upon as exceeding the limits of accuracy adopted by Searching for Shakespeare. A wooden batten is slotted horizontally into the back of the wooden panel, mortise and tenon fashion, to keep the left and right sides from coming apart. Viewed both from the rear of the panel in plan, and from the left and right sides in elevation, the batten shows the same brown coloration as the back of the panel, as well as the left-hand and much of the right-hand edge of the panel. Needless to say, the batten must be younger than that of the original Italian painting of Virgin, Child, and Saint John. Radio-carbon dating of the panel and the batten should indicate a discrepancy in age. At this point, I may be allowed to interrupt the account of the Flower portrait by noting the closing essay in Searching for Shakespeare, National

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Identity and the Afterlife of Shakespeares Portraits by Marcia Pointon (Cooper 217225). It provides a summary of current (or then current)9 professional thinking about Shakespeare portraiture that is radically opposed to that of Hammerschmidt-Hummel. The various portraits of the 2006 NPG exhibition are seen by Professor Pointon not as likenesses of the actual playwright, but as expressions of a need for mythologizing the ideal of Englands greatest poet and playwright. Indeed, according to Pointon, the idea of authentic portraiture is a wishful illusion and Shakespeare portraiture is a story of the triumph of art over life, and of desire over knowledge (Cooper 218). Furthermore, the name Shakespeare can never merely signify an individual in history, its meanings are forever changing, and forever challenging classication (Cooper 219).10 Unsurprisingly, the Darmstadt death mask, arguably the key to the facial correspondences in The True Face of William Shakespeare, occupies the polar opposite of Marcia Pointons viewpoint. Not only is a death mask a work of art, albeit a fairly literal one, it is not a portrait at all (Cooper 224). And, in contradiction to Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummels claim that the tomb monument of the English historian and antiquarian John Stow has features that are faithfully reproduced, quite clearly by using a death mask (H-H 19), Professor Pointon states that only royalty or nobility had death masks made in Shakespeares time (Cooper 224).11 One of the consequences of Pointons concept is that fraud and forgery are expressions of the Zeitgeist, equally capable of channeling emotional, not to mention nancial, investment in the objects of their attentionas are authentic works should these really exist. Whether the Chandos portrait is a genuine portrait of Shakespeare or not, Professor Pointon concludes that As an emblem of national identity and cultural pride it is without rival (Cooper 224).12 The popular lure of an exhibition such as Searching for Shakespeare, as with the tourist attractions of the Birthplace Trust in Stratford, derives from an appeal to the nave realism13 of those who pay to come. They expect to nd authentic relics, not social constructs.
9) This chapter is the revision of an essay published in Shakespeare Jahrbuch 133 (1997): 2953. Hammerschmidt-Hummel rebutted Pointons assumptions on the basis of cultural historical facts and practices in the Italian and English Renaissance in a 1997 Anglistik article. 10) Pointon here follows the line of Roland Barthes 142148. 11) Carbon dating of the mask or associated hairs could provide a check on this opinion. 12) The sponsor of the exhibition was not English but Crdit Suisse. 13) Nave realism is dened in the OED as the belief, usually attributed to non-philosophers, that a perceived object is not only real but has a reality in all its perceived attributes.

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The relevance of Marcia Pointons essay to what follows may become apparent. John Hay created a television lm for the BBCs The Culture Show entitled The Flower Portrait. It was broadcast on 21 April 2005 and detailed the examination of the Flower portrait by Dr. Tarnya Cooper and her assistants at the National Portrait Gallery in London. John Hay sent a copy of the lm, incorporating a BBC time code, to Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel so that she was able to examine it frame by frame. What was astonishing was the appearance of two versions of the portrait, neither of which corresponded in detail to the version the author had seen in 1996 and had reproduced in The True Face (144). One of the televised versions resembled the portrait which she later examined in Stratford on 26 January 2007. More disturbing, however, was the appearance of an, as yet, unremarked version, the upper edge of which showed solid, lightcolored, untreated wood without the friable irregularities observed in the 1996 original.14 This upper edge seemed to be of freshly cut wood without suggestions of aging or crumbling. By contrast, the Stratford 2007 version had some brown staining on all four edges. Also notable was the entire absence of stain on the upper righthand edge of the new version, whereas the portrait seen on 26 January 2007 showed brown stain.15 Even the apparently older version now in Stratford, however, looked in better condition than Marion Spielmanns description of the Flower portraits worm-eaten panel. The Hay television lm showed the preparation of the unstained version to be X-rayed. The reproduction of the X-ray in Searching for Shakespeare resembles the Courtauld Institute photograph of 1966, reproduced in Religion and the Arts Volume 7 (2003): 169. In both cases, the batten on the back of the panel appears as a light, horizontal band approximately half-way down the X-ray. Both photographs show a diagonal band, about as wide as the batten, on the upper half of the painting and to the left of the long vertical ssure. This corresponds with a band of wood on the back of the panel of the January 2007 portrait in Stratford. However, in the Xray in Searching for Shakespeare (74), as well as the 1966 Courtauld X-ray, the diagonal batten joins the ssure with an acute point at its upper end,
14) The unstained upper edge appears on a panel with the painted portrait obliquely visible on top. Therefore it cannot be that a blank panel was used for purposes of a television reconstruction. 15) Having seen the relevant stills from the Hay documentary lm, I nd it impossible to believe that the perceived dierences are due to dierences in lighting conditions.

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whereas the reverse side of the 2007 portrait seems to show the point broken o. The importance of the Flower portrait stems from its universally recognized similarity with the Droeshout engraving of 1623. The nding by the National Portrait Gallery that it is a copy of the engraving accords with Marcia Pointons theoretical summing up of Searching for Shakespeare. For Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel the Flower portrait is of special importance because of her hypothesis that the portrait was commissioned by Shakespeare with an eye to preserving a family heirloom bequeathed him by his Catholic mother. The ghostly presence of the Virgin behind a true likeness of Shakespeare is appealing to those for whom Desdemona, Cordelia, Marina, Innogen, Perdita, and Hermione bear an intentional resemblance to the Virgin.16 On 24 October 2007 Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel, on the basis of her new ndings in connection with her inspection of the Flower portrait in January 2007, and her close examination of the BBC lm, The Flower Portrait, published her claim that the Flower portrait tested by the National Portrait Gallery was a copy of the painting she had seen in July 1996: Wo ist das Original des Flower-Portrts? on the University of Mainz website, <http://zope/verwaltung.uni-mainz.de/presse/mitteilung>. Peter Beal concluded his review of The True Face with the words: For all we know, most if not all of the artifacts she [HammerschmidtHummel] discusses may be genuine contemporary, or near-contemporary, representations of Shakespeare and he may have suered from sarcoidosisor not. . . . Absolute truth, however, remains as elusive as ever. Certainly carbon dating would conrm the putative age of the wooden panel of the Flower portrait on display in Stratford and thus conrm its age of 450 years. Dating the batten would presumably establish that it was added at a later date when the ssure became apparent. Should scientic dating conrm the antiquity of the panel, then it could no longer be regarded as a copy, but as an over painting of the portrait which was restored in 1979. This, in turn, might weigh against The True Face of William Shakespeare, were it not for the fact that an over painting of the portrait should be plainly declared before forensic testing. The existence of the unstained copy seen in the Hay lm (where it is prepared for x-ray photog16)

For example, see Milward.

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raphy) should be explained. The truth need not be entirely as elusive as Peter Beal saw it.

Works Cited
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