Shakespeare on show: lifetime portrait discovered

A newly-identified picture of William Shakespeare has gone on public display in the Bard’s home town of Stratford-upon-Avon. The portrait is thought to be the only lifetime portrait of the great playwright and shows Shakespeare as he would have appeared to his contemporaries. The painting has been in the Cobbe family for centuries. Alec Cobbe, co-heir of the Cobbe estate, inherited the portrait in the 1980s and was unaware that the subject was Shakespeare until he attended the National Gallery Portrait exhibition, Searching for Shakespeare. The exhibit featured a portrait of Shakespeare that was initially accepted as being genuine but was discredited 70 years ago, after being found to be altered. Mr Cobbe immediately recognised that this was a copy of the original in his family collection. Painstaking research and verifications show the Cobbe portrait to be the original and leading experts agree that there is strong evidence that the sitter is Shakespeare himself. The portrait will be on display until September as part of the Shakespeare Found exhibition, which features other rarely seen portraits which illustrate the argument for the verification of the Cobbe portrait.

www.shakespearefound.org.uk