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Mystery of 'missing' Shakespeare portrait 30 October 2007 NewScientist.com news service It is the kind of argument William Shakespeare himself would have enjoyed. On one side is a claim that a famous portrait of the Bard has gone missing and been replaced by a fake. On the other side, the claim is dismissed as nonsense. The row is over a painting of Shakespeare known as the Flower portrait. Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel from the University of Mainz, Germany, examined the portrait in 1996 and pronounced it an authentic representation of Shakespeare, painted in 1609. In 2006, the National Portrait Gallery in London...

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...

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...