Monday, March 06, 2006
Shakespeare’s Portrait: Pure Genius
The so-called Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, in the National Portrait Gallery, “has always been the favourite likeness of Shakespeare” (S. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare’s Lives [New Edition, Clarendon Press, 1991], p. 203).
Which is just one of the many problems associated with this painting. A supposed image of Shakespeare, which it is still impossible to authenticate, is preferred over the only two genuine representations of the playwright which must have had some resemblance to him. The first of these is the limestone effigy by Gheerart Janssen in the Church of the Holy Trinity at Stratford, installed no later than 1623. The second is the copper engraving by Martin Droeshout, on the title page of the 1623 First Folio.
The Janssen effigy shows Shakespeare as podgy, mostly bald and with his mouth open. The church suffered from dampness and the effigy has been repeatedly retouched over the centuries. In 1793 it was painted white.
Droeshout was too young to have known Shakespeare, so scholars have agreed that his engraving must have been based on a miniature or drawing of Shakespeare, probably made in Shakespeare’s late thirties or early forties. That in itself, to my mind, throws even more doubt on the Chandos portrait. If the Chandos portrait is of Shakespeare, showing him in his prime, why didn’t John Heminge and Henry Condell commission Droeshout to copy that, instead of something else? Another question involves the relative ages of Shakespeare in the Droeshout engraving and the figure in the Chandos portrait. The latter has a receding hairline but isn’t yet bald. But Shakespeare is unequivocally bald in Droeshout. But to my eyes the figure in Droeshout isn’t any older than in Chandos; he could well be younger.
Ben Jonson’s poem ‘To the Reader’, appears to praise the engraving, saying that “the Grauer had a ftrife / with Nature, to out doo the life”? But it is impossible to draw any firm conclusions from Jonson’s poem. He might have been speaking sincerely; he might merely have been mouthing conventional platitudes; he might have been writing with his tongue wedged firmly in his cheek. The scholarly concensus is that the engraving is amateurish. In his Shakespeare: A Life (1998), Park Honan raises another possibility: Ben Jonson “could have approved it conventionally, perhaps, before seeing it”.
However, Honan goes on to say of Droeshout: “That the engraving of the head is accurate is supported by the bust at Holy Trinity, which has comparable skull proportions and the same famous perpendicular forehead.”
In her book Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from His Life (Arden Shakespeare, 2001), Katherine Duncan-Jones suggests that Shakespeare was a fatty:
It can be surmised that Shakespeare was distinctly corpulent, since both the Stratford bust and the Martin Droeshout engraving show him as plump-faced. Given that most portraits aim to flatter, he was probably in truth plumper still.
So what, then, of the Chandos portrait? The man in the portrait is no fatty. On the contrary, he’s the dark, swashbuckling type. It is certainly interesting that the gold ring in the sitter’s left ear and the undone drawstrings of the shirt may signify a poet. But that in itself proves nothing: there were hundreds of poets in England in the early seventeenth century, many of them from wealthy backgrounds and with sufficient income to commission a portrait. Vanity has always been a common occupational hazard for writers. But as far as we can tell, Shakespeare was a man notable for his reticence. He did not stand out in a crowd. He kept his opinions to himself. He made no effort to ensure that those of his writings published in his lifetime carried an image of the author. Would he really have commissioned a portrait of himself? And if he had done, wouldn’t it have ended up at his house in Stratford?
Schoenbaum bluntly sums up the problem with the Chandos painting: its early history “consists mainly of shadowy and contradictory traditions”. (p. 204) No one knows who the painter was, who the sitter was, or when the portrait was painted.
Interpretations of the Chandos painting are wildly subjective. One Victorian commentator sneered that it could hardly be Shakespeare because the figure in the painting “exhibits the complexion of a Jew, or rather that of a chimney-sweeper in the jaundice”. But in his book Tudor and Jacobean Portraits (1969), Sir Roy Strong asserted that Chandos had much in common with the effigy and the engraving: “The main features tally; only the hair, beard and moustache are differently arranged.”
The coolly sceptical Schoenbaum disagrees. He thinks the painting differs significantly from the engraving: “the forehead recedes rather than rising perpendicularly, the upper lip is short rather than long, and the chin pointed rather than round.” (p. 206)
You can see in Chandos whatever you want to see.
But there is another major problem with this oil painting. Schoenbaum mentions that “It has been more than once retouched over the years.” To learn what retouching can imply you need only compare the famous Corpus Christi College portrait believed to be of Christopher Marlowe with its condition before it was restored. The painting is reproduced in glorious colour at the front of the paperback edition of Charles Nicholl’s The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe. And it’s gorgeous. Fabulously fresh and full of colour. It’s full of life. Those eyes! Then take a look at p. 114 of Park Honan’s Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy (OUP, 2005). It shows the painting before it was restored. Unfortunately it was only photographed in black and white. Nevertheless, the difference between the two versions is shocking.
In my view the Chandos portrait simply meets a psychological need for an image of Shakespeare that matches a romantic conception of genius. Genius is darkly handsome and sticks a gold ear ring in its ear. Genius doesn’t put on weight, develop two chins and go bald.
Which is just one of the many problems associated with this painting. A supposed image of Shakespeare, which it is still impossible to authenticate, is preferred over the only two genuine representations of the playwright which must have had some resemblance to him. The first of these is the limestone effigy by Gheerart Janssen in the Church of the Holy Trinity at Stratford, installed no later than 1623. The second is the copper engraving by Martin Droeshout, on the title page of the 1623 First Folio.
The Janssen effigy shows Shakespeare as podgy, mostly bald and with his mouth open. The church suffered from dampness and the effigy has been repeatedly retouched over the centuries. In 1793 it was painted white.
Droeshout was too young to have known Shakespeare, so scholars have agreed that his engraving must have been based on a miniature or drawing of Shakespeare, probably made in Shakespeare’s late thirties or early forties. That in itself, to my mind, throws even more doubt on the Chandos portrait. If the Chandos portrait is of Shakespeare, showing him in his prime, why didn’t John Heminge and Henry Condell commission Droeshout to copy that, instead of something else? Another question involves the relative ages of Shakespeare in the Droeshout engraving and the figure in the Chandos portrait. The latter has a receding hairline but isn’t yet bald. But Shakespeare is unequivocally bald in Droeshout. But to my eyes the figure in Droeshout isn’t any older than in Chandos; he could well be younger.
Ben Jonson’s poem ‘To the Reader’, appears to praise the engraving, saying that “the Grauer had a ftrife / with Nature, to out doo the life”? But it is impossible to draw any firm conclusions from Jonson’s poem. He might have been speaking sincerely; he might merely have been mouthing conventional platitudes; he might have been writing with his tongue wedged firmly in his cheek. The scholarly concensus is that the engraving is amateurish. In his Shakespeare: A Life (1998), Park Honan raises another possibility: Ben Jonson “could have approved it conventionally, perhaps, before seeing it”.
However, Honan goes on to say of Droeshout: “That the engraving of the head is accurate is supported by the bust at Holy Trinity, which has comparable skull proportions and the same famous perpendicular forehead.”
In her book Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from His Life (Arden Shakespeare, 2001), Katherine Duncan-Jones suggests that Shakespeare was a fatty:
It can be surmised that Shakespeare was distinctly corpulent, since both the Stratford bust and the Martin Droeshout engraving show him as plump-faced. Given that most portraits aim to flatter, he was probably in truth plumper still.
So what, then, of the Chandos portrait? The man in the portrait is no fatty. On the contrary, he’s the dark, swashbuckling type. It is certainly interesting that the gold ring in the sitter’s left ear and the undone drawstrings of the shirt may signify a poet. But that in itself proves nothing: there were hundreds of poets in England in the early seventeenth century, many of them from wealthy backgrounds and with sufficient income to commission a portrait. Vanity has always been a common occupational hazard for writers. But as far as we can tell, Shakespeare was a man notable for his reticence. He did not stand out in a crowd. He kept his opinions to himself. He made no effort to ensure that those of his writings published in his lifetime carried an image of the author. Would he really have commissioned a portrait of himself? And if he had done, wouldn’t it have ended up at his house in Stratford?
Schoenbaum bluntly sums up the problem with the Chandos painting: its early history “consists mainly of shadowy and contradictory traditions”. (p. 204) No one knows who the painter was, who the sitter was, or when the portrait was painted.
Interpretations of the Chandos painting are wildly subjective. One Victorian commentator sneered that it could hardly be Shakespeare because the figure in the painting “exhibits the complexion of a Jew, or rather that of a chimney-sweeper in the jaundice”. But in his book Tudor and Jacobean Portraits (1969), Sir Roy Strong asserted that Chandos had much in common with the effigy and the engraving: “The main features tally; only the hair, beard and moustache are differently arranged.”
The coolly sceptical Schoenbaum disagrees. He thinks the painting differs significantly from the engraving: “the forehead recedes rather than rising perpendicularly, the upper lip is short rather than long, and the chin pointed rather than round.” (p. 206)
You can see in Chandos whatever you want to see.
But there is another major problem with this oil painting. Schoenbaum mentions that “It has been more than once retouched over the years.” To learn what retouching can imply you need only compare the famous Corpus Christi College portrait believed to be of Christopher Marlowe with its condition before it was restored. The painting is reproduced in glorious colour at the front of the paperback edition of Charles Nicholl’s The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe. And it’s gorgeous. Fabulously fresh and full of colour. It’s full of life. Those eyes! Then take a look at p. 114 of Park Honan’s Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy (OUP, 2005). It shows the painting before it was restored. Unfortunately it was only photographed in black and white. Nevertheless, the difference between the two versions is shocking.
In my view the Chandos portrait simply meets a psychological need for an image of Shakespeare that matches a romantic conception of genius. Genius is darkly handsome and sticks a gold ear ring in its ear. Genius doesn’t put on weight, develop two chins and go bald.
# posted by Ellis : 7:54 AM
