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.
EDWARD DE VERE
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE