Overbury Overdrive, pt. 5: The Empire Strikes Back

The genteel slapping sounds of kid-leather-glove-against-cheek have been on the rise in the pages of the Times Literary Supplement of late.

Last week, this blog noted the arguments put forward by Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones that, in short, the eyes have it: The new "Cobbe portrait," featuring the face of Sir Thomas Overbury, is actually a portrait of Sir Thomas Overbury and not, pace Stanley Wells and his colleagues at the Stratford Birthplace Trust, a portrait of Will Shakespeare.

"Sir,--" Stanley Wells begins his rebuttal in this week's TLS. (Isn't it curious how the newspaper as a medium is dying, reaching out to every reader it can, while one of the world's most legendary upholders of newspaperly traditions hasn't quite gotten around to addressing the ladyfolk yet?)

" Katherine Duncan-Jones," Wells writes, "attempts to revive David Piper’s ill-founded suggestion of 1964 and 1982 that the Cobbe portrait portrays not William Shakespeare but Sir Thomas Overbury (March 20). Piper claimed that an “early inventory” of the Ellenborough collection, sold in 1947....."

The snows of largely irrelevant facts and dates continue to fly as Wells urges his readers to pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

"[P]erceived resemblance unsupported by documentary evidence is a naive (though natural) basis for identification," Wells writes. "Different people can look alike."

So, let's see... there's an engraving of Sir Thomas Overbury that says it's an engraving of Sir Thomas Overbury. And there's a miniature that says its sitter is Sir Thomas Overbury. Both of these pieces of documentary evidence have the same face as the Cobbe portrait of "Shakespeare." (Not going to rehash the previous posting that makes this straightforward case.)

But, to quote an old sage, your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them.

Er... well, except when it comes to noticing some interesting similarities between the Cobbe portrait and the Droeshout engraving in the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio.

Wells continues:

"Duncan-Jones waves away our suggestion that the Cobbe portrait was the basis for Droeshout’s 1623 engraving, where the sitter is only slightly less richly dressed. Certainly Droeshout appears to have simplified the image, updated the collar, and given Shakespeare less hair, possibly reflecting his later appearance. He was keen enough to catch the cast in Shakespeare’s left eye, not present in the Overbury portrait. But engravers commonly simplified and updated... Compositionally, the 1623 engraving and the Cobbe portrait match perfectly.

And there you have it. The Droeshout and the Cobbe match one another perfectly. So says the good professor, anyway.

Remember, the Cobbe portrait hasn't even been shown to the public yet. The Cobbe's official unveiling, at an exhibition in Stratford-upon-Avon, is still 25 days away.

Shall we compare the mounting bluster to a summer's breeze? It's certainly getting drafty in here.

Overbury Overdrive, pt. 3: The (modern day) back-story

Here is a fascinating interview Channel 4 (UK) did with the family owner of the Cobbe portrait of "Shakespeare," the art restorer Alec Cobbe. An affable chap. After the 35 minute mark, the interviewer asks a few questions about the possible Thomas Overbury identification. And Cobbe says, essentially, that facial features can't be used to identify a sitter in a portrait.

But rewind the tape by about ten minutes, and there's Cobbe arguing for his portrait being a "Shakespeare" portrait by appealing to the similarities between his painting and the Droeshaut engraving of Shakespeare.

So there you have it. It can when you want it to, but it can't when you don't.

"Is this the real Shakespeare?" Um... No.

You may have caught the latest bit of Stratford Birthplace Trust-spawned media hype over the past few days. Here's a quick summary: We have a new portrait of Shakespeare! One painted during his lifetime! At long last!



Ahem. Yeah. Nice "new" picture of an old Jacobean poet there, guys.

Take a look for yourself. The "new portrait of Shakespeare" is to the left. An attributed engraving of the Jacobean writer Sir Thomas Overbury (1581-1613), to the right. Same guy. Plain as the nose on his face.

The owner of the "new Shakespeare" (a.k.a. Overbury) portrait, a British art restorer named Alec Cobbe, also set off a wave of media coverage in 2002 when he brought out what he claimed was a new portrait of the Earl of Southampton [PDF] that he owned. (Southampton was the dedicatee of the epic Shakespeare poems Venus and Adonis and Lucrece and is widely believed to have been the "fair youth" of The Sonnets. No one, short of the author and his family, is so closely tied to the conventional history of Shakespeare.)

Cobbe's would-be Southampton image was long thought to be a woman. But, in the process of researching an exhibition on his family's art collection, Cobbe says he discovered the Southampton connection.

Compare the media coverage of the 2002 and 2009 Cobbe-related news events:

The Guardian, Apr. 21, 2002:
But it was not until earlier this year, he says, after the Kenwood exhibition had closed, that 'the penny finally dropped. Suddenly I realised that the face reminded me of pictures I had seen during my research into my family's history. "My God," I thought, "could this be the third Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron and, perhaps, his lover?"'

The Telegraph, Mar. 9, 2009:
It remained in the same family for centuries and was inherited by art restorer Alec Cobbe. In 2006, he visited the National Portrait Gallery and saw a painting of Shakespeare that hangs in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington. It had been accepted as a life portrait of Shakespeare, but was discredited 70 years ago. Mr Cobbe saw the painting and realised the similarities with the painting he had inherited.

Kind of incredible. So according to the 2002 and 2009 news reports, then, Cobbe has transformed two old portraits owned by his family into two images of the two most important historical figures in Shakespeare studies.

Uh-huh. Sure.

Important to emphasize: I don't know nor do I really care what Cobbe's motives are in making the attributions that he has. I have no cause to suspect that he or anyone else driving this story doubts the "new Shakespeare portrait" attribution they've made. But I do find the attribution faulty. Especially when this "Shakespeare portrait" has Overbury's face!

And the portrait's Latin inscription, I think, seals the case that the portrait's subject was Thomas Overbury -- not William Shakespeare. Or, for that matter, Edward de Vere.

More on that in a day or two. [D'oh! Katherine Duncan-Jones beat me to the punch.]

[Thanks to readers G.Q. and R.C. for their help in putting together this post.]
[Edited to clarify how Cobbe says he made his 2002 discovery and to add the final point of emphasis.]