PAGES : Much Ado About Shakespeare Art

A famous image of William Shakespeare--the engraving on the 1623 First Folio edition of his collected works--was based on a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, a computer expert says.

The engraver, Martin Droeshout, may have used the queen as a model to acknowledge her patronage of the theater and perhaps her inspiration to Shakespeare, says New Jersey computer artist Lillian Schwartz.

Schwartz, who suggested in 1986 that Leonardo da Vinci was his own model for the Mona Lisa, used computers to compare the Folio portrait with other images of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan notables.

The image matched the 1588 portrait of Elizabeth by her staff artist, George Gower, Schwartz said. She said the eyes, cheeks and nose match, and the distance between the eyes is the same

“With this, it’s so perfect that there’s no doubt,” says Schwartz.

She attributes the differences--beard, mustache, jaw lines and forehead--to an attempt by Droeshout to add masculine features.

Shakespearean scholars disparaged the findings. “Absolute garbage,” scoffs Paul Bertram of Rutgers University, who has written studies of Shakespeare’s portraits.

Bertram and Steven Rogel of Stanford University say there are three authentic portraits of Shakespeare--the Folio engraving, a bust of Shakespeare in Trinity Church in Oxford and a painting known as the “Flower” portrait.

“There is a standard physiognomy of Shakespeare through the three portraits,” Rogel says.