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The New York Times: “His face is open and alive, with a rosy, rather sweet expression, perhaps suggestive of modesty.”

One of the most famous portraits of English playwright William Shakespeare is not him after all, Britain's National Portrait Gallery announced Friday. The Grafton Portrait is one of the most iconic images of the literary giant. However, after nine months of restoration work and research, the National Portrait Gallery announced that it has no evidence to support the view that it is of Shakespeare. Scientific investigation proved that the picture, painted in oils by an anonymous artist, dates back to 1588, when the playwright would have been 24. An inscription on the painting records the date of 1588 and the...

Scores of literature students and buffs think that, after 400 years, they know Shakespeare - the balding guy with frilly neckware, a goatee and a stiff upper lip who brought us the mercurial musings of Hamlet and the amorous entreaties of Romeo. Not everyone sees him that way. British painter John Taylor saw William Shakespeare as a bit more bohemian, an Elizabethan hipster. His portrait has the bard in a long beard, plain white collar, disheveled hair and a gold hoop in his left ear. The truth is nobody knows what Shakespeare looked like because there is no record that...

William Shakespeare died in pain of a rare form of cancer that deformed his left eye, according to a German academic who claims to have discovered the disease in four genuine portraits of the world's most famous playwright. As London's National Portrait Gallery prepares to reveal in a show next week that only one out of six portraits of the Bard may be his exact likeness, Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, from the University of Mainz, provided forensic evidence that there are at least four contemporary portraits of Shakespeare. Hammerschmidt-Hummel, who will publish in April the results of her 10-year research in "The...

FAMED PORTRAIT OF PLAYWRIGHT IS A FRAUD: ARTWORK IS 200 YEARS TOO YOUNG FOR BARDLONDON (AP) - One of the best-known portraits of William Shakespeare is a fraud, painted 200 years after the playwright's death, experts at Britain's National Portrait Gallery said Thursday. Many art authorities had long suspected that the work, known as the Flower portrait, was painted much more recently than the 1609 date on the image. The work shows Shakespeare gazing out at an angle and wearing a wide white collar. It has been widely reproduced and often is printed on the covers of his plays. Tarnya...

By Mike Collett-White LONDON (Reuters) - A 400-year-old painting previously believed to be that of a woman has been found to portray the male patron and friend of William Shakespeare, its owner said on Tuesday. The picture of the Earl of Southampton, featuring a figure with long, black curly hair, pursed red lips, an earring and a slender right hand, has prompted speculation in British media that Shakespeare was gay. "He is wearing perfectly fashionable male attire of the day, but the earring and the hair are effeminate and unusual for the 1590s," the painting's owner Alec Cobbe told Reuters....

LONDON (Reuters) - A 400-year-old painting previously believed to be that of a woman has been found to portray the male patron and friend of William Shakespeare, its owner said on Tuesday. The picture of the Earl of Southampton, featuring a figure with long, black curly hair, pursed red lips, an earring and a slender right hand, has prompted speculation in British media that Shakespeare was gay. "He is wearing perfectly fashionable male attire of the day, but the earring and the hair are effeminate and unusual for the 1590s," the painting's owner Alec Cobbe told Reuters. He said that...

Ananova Breaking Wire-What the Papers Say-The London Daily SunSHAKESQUEERMe thinks new evidence has emerged that doth suggest William Shakespeare might have been gay.I RULETony Blair delivered an astonishing slapdown to Gordon Brown yesterday by stressing that Britain had elected him to run the country not the chancellorStory Filed: 00:14 Monday, April 22, 2002 Greenwich Mean Time

Portrait of Shakespeare unveiled The portrait of Shakespeare has attracted attention A portrait of William Shakespeare thought to be the only picture made of him during his lifetime has been unveiled in Warwickshire. The painting is on show at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon, to celebrate the playwright's birthday on 23 April. The trust said it was convinced the artwork, thought to date back to 1610, was an authentic portrait. But some critics have gone on record to say the picture is not of Shakespeare. The painting, known as the Cobbe portrait, was inherited by art restorer Alec Cobbe and...

A 400 year old painting thought to be the only surviving portrait of William Shakespeare from his lifetime is to be unveiled. The picture, painted in 1610, six years before the playwright's death, has been owned by the Cobbe family since the early 18th century. But for three centuries they were unsure if the subject was Britain’s greatest writer. At one point it was thought to be Sir Walter Raleigh.