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THE ASHBOURNE PORTRAIT
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

To contribute with the doubts about Will Shaksper, we found information on
"The Ashbourne Portrait".  This painting was long rumored to be of Shakespeare.
However, in the late 1930's it became involved in the authorship issue when X-rays
revealed that it was in fact an over-painting of a different portrait, a portrait that
showed some special links to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. This finding was
reported in the January 1940 issue of Scientific American

The research for this 1940 article was carried out by Charles Wisner Barrell, and
followed by Dr. M.H. Speilman. Dr. Speilman's work was based upon his suspiscion
that this "new" Shakespeare portrait might possibly be just another fraud. He noted
that the color of the paint that gave the age of the sitter as 47 in 1611 was also
the same color gold on the thumb ring on the left hand and the emblem on the book,
but it didn't seem to match the rest of the colors in the portrait. He also noted that
the ruff around the neck seemed to be almost by another hand, and that the hair
seemed to have been retouched.

Thirty years later Charles Wisner Barrell entered the picture. A confirmed Oxfordian,
he had noticed that the Ashbourne showed a striking resemblance to the Welbeck
portrait of Oxford, painted in 1575. Barrell decided to bring science to bear on this
matter, and arranged for an infra-red study of the portrait to see if any changes
and/or underlying elements could be discovered.



The next changes came up as evidene:

The portrait had been altered.

The original hairline had been raised an inch or more, transforming the sitter into a balding individual.

The original ruff around the neck had been altered. The original ruff appears to have been twice the size of the new one, and the original appears to have been of the fluted pattern worn by Elizabethan courtiers.

The gold paint used for the lettering in the upper left is the same as the gold paint used in the middle of the thumb ring and the middle of the book crest.

Under the dab of gold paint on the thumb ring was the outline of a boar's head, one of the devices of the Earls of Oxford.

Under the gold painted inscription in the upper left are the outlines of a coat of arms nearly identical to that used by the Trentham family. Oxford married Elizabeth Trentham in 1592.
 
 

This portrait, that was thought  to be a portrait of Shakespeare by the family
that owned it, was apparently altered at some point in time to make it appear
to be the traditional Shakespeare.  Close analysis makes it virtually certain that
the original portrait underlying the alterations is a lost portrait of Edward de Vere.
 

                              

EDWARD DE VERE            WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
 
 

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