LETTER OF THE MONTH
Mistaken identity?
The painting selected to illustrate William Shakespeare in the December issue (En- counters) is captioned: “A c1610 painting of William Shakespeare, kept in the Cobbe Collection, is thought to be the only portrait of the English playwright to have been taken from life.”
However, the Cobbe portrait (left) has never been proven to depict Shakespeare – and, in all likelihood, doesn’t. Research by Tarnya Cooper, former chief curator of the National Portrait Gallery, has shown that it is almost certainly a painting of the poet Sir Thomas Overbury, a contemporary of Shakespeare’s. Compare the Cobbe portrait to the portrait of Overbury by the Flemish painter Marcus Gheeraerts
