b. Newspaper articles
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Clare Fitzsimmons, 'RSC portrait switched for a fake says scholar', Stratford Observer (1 November 2007). |
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent, ‘Double, double, Shakespeare oil in trouble’, The Times (25 October 2007)
Internet publication:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article2733625.ece
A portrait of Shakespeare that has been in the collection of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon since 1892 has secretly been replaced by a 19th-century fake during the past decade, a German scholar claims.
Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel said that the famous portrait, The Flower, was not the original that she examined between 1995 and 2005 and which was among the very few reliable likenesses of the playwright.
Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel said yesterday that the original had been substituted by a copy. In 2005 it was sent to the laboratories of the National Portrait Gallery and dismissed as a 19th century forgery after it was found to contain chrome yellow, a colour that was commercially available only from 1814 onwards.
‘Where is the priceless 400-year-old original Flower portrait?’ asked the professor, who lectures in English literature at the University of Mainz.
She said that she was basing her conclusions on tests that she carried out on what she says was the original - which she last saw in 1996 - and on the version that she claims is a copy, which she saw in January.
She indicated that evidence found in X-rays and photographs, and the support of ... [an expert on] Old Masters and forensic science, gave weight to the theory. Bt the RSC and NPG have said that any perceived differences are caused by lighting conditions and different equipment.
Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel said that she became suspicious after her German publishers contacted the RSC and requested a transparency of the portrait for reproduction in her forthcoming book. She said that they received a picture that she claimed was ‘strikingly different’ from the one supplied by the company in 1996.
She commissioned scientific tests from Reinhardt Altmann, an expert at the German Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation. She said: ‘Altmann concluded that the picture provided in 2002 must be a copy. Professor Wolfgang Speyer, of the University of Salzburg and an expert on Old Masters, confirmed the differences between the two pictures.’
She said that the wood of the painting’s panel in Stratford was in sharp contrast to that of the original [which was, she said, ‘over 400 years old, fragile and worm-eaten’ - This relative clause was added in the printed version of ‘Double, double, Shakespeare oil in trouble’].
Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel said: ‘It had already been described in these terms by British experts at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, among them the director of the National Portrait Gallery [Sir Lionel Cust]’ [This sentence is missing in the printed version of ‘Double, double, Shakespeare oil in trouble’].
The edges of the portrait examined in January were ‘solid, showing no signs of wormwood damage ... [and] the peripheral areas, which in the original painting are brittle and have been broken or chipped away in places, exhibit no such damage in the portrait inspected in the RSC depository’ [Missing in the printed version of ‘Double, double, Shakespeare oil in trouble’].
She noted that the original had a deep crack, whereas the alleged copy had ‘an imitated crack’. David Howells, the curator of the RSC collection, said that the crack ‘doesn’t appear to be identical. It’s not there as she remembers seeing it, but that was over ten years ago’ [Missing in the printed version of ‘Double, double, Shakespeare oil in trouble’].
An X-ray examination in 1966 by the Courtauld Institute of Art revealed that a painting of a Madonna and the Christ-child from the late 15th or early 16th century lay beneath the portrait [Missing in the printed version of ‘Double, double, Shakespeare oil in trouble’].
Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel said: ‘In the older X-ray, the outline of the right-hand side of the Madonna’s head runs through Shakespeare’s left eye, close to the nasal side of the pupil. The new X-ray mistakenly has what appears to be the bridge of the Madonna’s nose bisecting Shakespeare’s left eye. The conclusion must be that the Madonna beneath the portrait is a poor imitation and it follows that the portrait is not genuine’ [Missing in the printed version of ‘Double, double, Shakespeare oil in trouble’].
...
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent, ‘Double, double, Shakespeare oil in trouble’, The Times (25 October 2007)
Printed version
Original was switched, says scholar of the Bard
Crack and panel wood prove two are different
Abridged version of the article published by Times online. Important omissions are marked in the text above.
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent, ‘Do mine eyes deceive me, or is tis portrait a mere forgery?’, The Times (25 October 2007)
Another printed version. Differs slighly from the printed version of ‘Double, double, Shakespeare oil in trouble’.
Rob Edwards, ‘Mystery of ‘missing’ Shakespeare portrait’,
New Scientist Magazine (27 October 2007), p. 21.
Internet publication (25 October 2007)
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 exhibited what it believes to be the same portrait, but what Hammerschmdit-Hummel claims is a copy. This copy, she says, has a more modern wooden panel, and the outline of a Madonna detected beneath the paint by X-rays in 2005 is significantly different from that recorded in a 1966 X-ray. The painting she examined in 1996, Hammerschmidt-Hummel says, has ‘vanished’ and been replaced by a copy.
Not true, insists Tarnya Cooper, who examined the painting in 2005 as curator at the National Portrait Gallery. The idea that the original Flower portrait had been substituted by a copy was ‘plainly nonsensical’.
There’s another twist. Cooper says that in any case the Flower portrait was not painted in Shakespeare’s time; it is a 19th-century fake. She puts down any perceived differences in images of the painting to lighting conditions.
‘Has Bard’s original portrait been replaced by a fake?’,
World News, ANI (25 October 2007)
The Flower, the famous portrait of William Shakespeare has been replaced with a 19th century fake in the collection of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in Stratford-upon-Avon in the past decade, a German scholar claims.
Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel said that she found that the famous portrait that has been in the company since 1892 was not the original painting ...
The Flower is known to be one of the few reliable likenesses of the playwright.
...
‘Where is the priceless 400-year-old original Flower portrait?’ Times Online quoted the professor ...
Hammerschmidt-Hummel said that she is supporting her claims on the test that she conducted in 1996 when she saw the original for the last time, and that the one she saw this January wasn’t the original.
She called for scietific tests from Reinhardt Altmann, an expert at the German Federal Bereau of Criminal Investigation [BKA = CID/FBI].
Altmann concluded that the picture provided in 2002 must be a copy. Professor Wolfgang Speyer, of the University of Salzburg and an expert on Old Masters, confirmed the differences between the two pictures,’ she said.
It had already been described in these terms by British experts at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, among them the director of the National Portrait Gallery.’
‘(The edges of the portrait examined in January were) solid, showing no signs of wormwood damage ... [and] the peripheral areas, which in the original painting are brittle and have been broken or chipped away in places, exhibit no such damage in the portrait inspected in the RSC depository,’ she said.
An X-ray examination in 1966 by the Courtauld Institute of Art found that beneath the portrait was a painting of a Madonna and the Christ child from the late 15th or early 16th century.
‘In the older X-ray, the outline of the right-hand side of the Madonna’s head runs through Shakespeare’s left eye, close to the nasal side of the pupil. The new X-ray mistakenly has what appears to be the bridge of the Madonna’s bisecting Shakespeare’s left eye. The conclusion must be that the Madonna beneath the portrait is a poor imitation and it follows that the portrait is not genuine,’ Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel said.
However, both the RSC and the portrait gallery have refuted the claims.
‘The idea that this picture has been substituted for a different portrait between 1996 and 2005 is plainly nonsensical ... Any perceived differences between photographs are likely to be caused by differences in lighting conditions,’ Dr Tarnya Cooper, the portrait gallery’s 16th century curator, said.
Stanley Wells ... called Pofessor Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s claims ‘disgraceful’. ...
‘Bard’s original portrait or a fake?’, Zeenews.com (India Edition) (25 October 2007)
The Flower, the famous portrait of William Shakespeare has been replaced with a 19th century fake in the collection of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in Stratford-upon-Avon in the past decade, a German scholar claims.
Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel said that she found that the famous portrait that has been in the company since 1892 was not the original painting ...
The Flower is known to be one of the few reliable likenesses of the playwright.
...
(see text under ‘Has Bard’s original portrait been replaced by a fake?’)
‘Shakespeare’s ‘Flower Portrait’ not a replica, claims curator’, News, ANI (31 October 2007)
Internet publication: http://in.news.yahoo.com/071031/139/6mmsm.html
While it still remains shrouded in mystery whether the famous Flower Portrait of William Shakespeare has been replaced with a replica, a curator has said that any suggestion about the painting’s replacement is untrue.
Tarnya Cooper, who examined the painting in 2005 as curator at the National Portrait Gallery, contends that the claims of The Flower Portrait being replaced with a replica are ‘plainly nonsensical’.
Cooper even claims that the portrait was not painted in Shakespeare’s time, and that it is a 19th-century fake, reports New Scientist magazine.
Her remarks come days after Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel of the University of Mainz, Germany, claimed that the Bard’s famous painting [tested by Cooper in 2005] was just a replica.
Hammerschmidt-Hummel had examined The Flower Portrait in 1996, and proclaimed it an auhtentic representation of the Bard, painted in 1609.
She recently claimed that the painting she had examined in 1996 has been replaced with a copy.
According to her, the copy of the portrait [Cooper had examined in 2005] had a more modern wooden panel. She also said that the outline of a Madonna detected beneath the paint by X-rays in 2005 was significantly different from that recorded in a 1966 X-ray.
Extract from the Article by Timothy Sexton, “The Mystery of the Shakespeare Flower Portrait: A Tale of Forgery and Battling Art Experts.
A Story Just Begging to Be Turned into a Book or Screenplay”, [http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/435585/the_mystery_of_the_shakespeare_fl...] (4 November 2007).
First came the mystery of whether Shakespeare or someone else actually wrote his plays. Then came [the] mystery of whether Shakespeare the writer ever actually even existed, as opposed to Shakespeare the actor. Now comes yet another very intriguing mystery in which the Bard plays a role. This time around, however, we can rest assured he did not pen this tale of suspense. ...
You have no doubt seen the famous portrait of Shakespeare as a balding man with a mustache and hair just beneath his lip, attired in high collared [sic] Elizabethan garb. The painting is popularly known as the Flower portrait. Last year the National Portrait Gallery in London displayed the painting, believed to have been completed in 1609. Ten years before the painting was displayed a German [Shakespeare scholar and] art expert examined the painting and reaffirmed* its authenticity. Following the display, however, that very same expert - Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel declared the painting at the Natioanl Portrait Gallery to be a forgery. X-ray technology done in 1966 had revealed that the portrait had been painted over an earlier work showing the Madonna. X-rays taking in 2005 revealed the same Madonna, but in outlines that appeared to be significantly altered from the Flower portrait examined by Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel in 1996 [and from the 1966 x-ray]. As a result, she declared that the painting being viewed by thousands to be a copy. The curator of the National Portrait Gallery responded by calling the idea that the museum was displaying a phony to be utter nonsense. Not only that, but she [Hammerschmidt-Hummel] also asserted that the original had, in her words, “vanished.” Ocean’s 14 stuff, to be sure, but wait, it gets even better.
That curator, Tarnya Cooper, added another level to this mystery, turning it from something that might feature a character named Danny Ocean into something that might feature a character named Keyser Soze. According to Cooper, Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel mistook a 19th century paiting for an original 17th century painting. In other words, that original painting that she now says has vanished was nothing but a forgery in the first place. Cooper claims the painting on display is that very painting that underwent X-ray examination in 1966, but it was never the painting that everybody thought it was in the first place.
It’s a great story, one that may very well one day wind up in another Dan Brown novel. After all, surely Shakespeare must have been involved in all that Da Vinci code type stuff; doubtlessly there are clues buried throughout his writing. Perhaps there is even a clue in the writing that gives a hint about what actually happened to that 1609 Flower portrait. In fact, could it not be possible that the original painting itself contains secrets that must be kept away from the masses inside a British museum? If in fact Cooper is either wrong or lying and the painting on display is the one and only fake, and Hildegard is correct about how the original has vanished ... man, that is a book or movie just waiting to be written. And if Cooper is right, the book becomes a novel and the movie becomes an opportunity for wildly speculative fiction like The Da Vinci Code or JFK.
[* In 1995-96, the author proved the authenticity of the Flower portrait for the first time - with the help of identification experts from the Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany and Professors of Medicine.]
Author’s note: I should like to draw the readers’ attention to my Letters to the Editor of The Stratford Observer (6 November 2007), New Scientist 27 October 2007) and The Times (25 October 2007) - and also to the facts presented in my British publisher’s Press Release (24 October 2006) and the one the University of Mainz published that same day. These facts, in my view, speak for themselves.
c. Leserbrief / Letter to the Editor
I am very happy that the Stratford Observer has taken up a subject I am much concerned about, namely, what may have happened to the original Flower portrait. It is now to be hoped that the public in and around Stratford will also develop a lively interest in this unanswered question. The original Flower portrait is undoubtedly a most significant cultural and historical testimony to the identity of Stratford’s greatest son, who as an icon of world literature made his hometown the most famous town in the world. Eminent British experts, among them Sir Lionel Cust, director of the National Portrait Gallery (known for his scrupulous attention to facts), thoroughly examined the old, fragile and worm-eaten painting around 1900 and in the 1920s. They all expressed their conviction that the portrait dated from the early 17th century and that its incription ‘1609’ was authentic. I possess a brilliant high-resolution RSC transparency of the original, which I received from Brian Glover in 1996, the then director of the RSC Collection. Between 1995 and 2005, I established the authenticity of the Flower portrait as well as three other likenesses of Shakespeare by employing modern research methods and cooperating with numerous specialists. These investigations and their results are presented in full detail in my book The True Face of William Shakespeare. The Poet’s Death Mask and Likenesses from Three Periods of His Life (2006). Should you be interested in these results, I would be happy to send you a summary for publication in the Stratford Observer. The NPG curator Dr Tarnya Cooper insists that the Flower portrait, examined under her supervision in 2005, was the one donated to the Stratford Gallery in 1895 . This painting, she said, was a 19th century ‘fake’ because it contained chrome yellow, a colour not commercially available until 1814. The wood of the portrait, x-rayed in the NPG laboratories in 2005, is relatively new, thick, sound and robust, showing no signs of wormwood damage, as can be clearly seen in the BBC documentary ‘The Flower Portrait’ (2005), which presents Cooper’s results. This is in striking contrast to the old panel, expressly described as ‘worm-eaten’ roughly one hundred years ago. The peripheral areas of the Flower portrait, which I examined in 1995-96 and was able to authenticate with the help of forensic and medical experts, were brittle and had been broken away in places. This can be seen in the excellent high-resolution transparency I received from Brian Glover in 1996 - as mentioned above. On the whole, Clare Fitzsimmons, in her excellent article, ‘RSC portrait switched for a fake says scholar’ (1 November 2007), has presented many of my further observations correctly. These observations prove without doubt that Dr Tarnya Cooper cannot have examined the old original portrait. They also prove that the original is no longer extant in the RSC collection. The portrait I examined in the depository of the RSC on 26 January 2007 is neither in congruence with the original nor with the one attached to the article by Clare Fitzsimmons. My publisher’s press release of 24 October 2006, which I attach to this letter, contains a summary of the results of my examinations. The complete results will soon be published in a journal. The comments hitherto made by Dr Cooper, David Howells and Prof. Stanley Wells are general explanations. They do not refer to the new facts I presented. So the question remains: What has happend to the original Flower portrait? I would appreciate it very much if your newspaper could contribute to inspiring further public interest and to clarifying the present mystery. It is sincerely to be wished that the original Flower portrait will be found again and exhibited at the RSC picture gallery, so that this wonderful true-to-life likeness of William Shakespeare can be enjoyed by a worldwide public once more. Yours sincerely,
Professor Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent, ‘Double, double, Shakespeare oil in trouble’, The Times (25 October 2007)
Sir, The NPG curator Dr Tarnya Cooper insists that the Flower portrait, examined under her supervision in 2005, was the one donated to the Stratford Gallery in 1895 (‚Double, double, Shakespeare oil in trouble’, Oct. 25). This painting, she said, was a 19th century ‘fake’ because it contained chrome yellow, a colour not commercially available until 1814. The wood of the portrait, x-rayed in the NPG laboratories in 2005, is relatively new, thick, sound and robust, showing no signs of wormwood damage, as can be clearly seen in the BBC documentary ‘The Flower Portrait’ (2005), which presents Cooper’s results. This is in striking contrast to the old panel. Eminent English experts around 1900 and in the 1920s, among them Sir Lionel Cust, director of the National Portrait Gallery, described the painting as being old and worm-eaten, and expressed their conviction that it was a genuine early seventeenth-century painting and that its date ‘1609’ was authentic. The peripheral areas of the Flower portrait, which I examined in 1995-96 and was able to authenticate with the help of forensic and medical experts, were brittle and had been broken away in places. This can be seen in the high resolution transparency I received from Brian Glover, director of the RSC Collection, in 1996. The sound wood panel of the portrait I inspected in the RSC depository years later in January 2007 differed from the one x-rayed in 2005 and was also in striking contrast to that of the original. Its edges were intact and partly sealed. Where the light brown wood is visible, it is very solid, again showing no signs of wormwood damage. This image too was present in the BBC documentary, easily recognizable by the remnants of the beige-coloured strips of paper on its back. Neither of the two paintings tested in the NPG laboratories corresponded to original Flower portrait which Nancy Stocker had thoroughly restored at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 1979. There are, in fact, so many divergences that only a few can be referred to here. Stocker had uncovered all the realistically depicted signs of illness in the poet’s face, so that medical experts between 1995 and 2005 were able to describe and diagnose them. In 1966, an x-ray of the original Flower portrait had been made by the London Courtauld Institute, revealing an early 16th century Madonna beneath the Shakespeare portrait. A comparison between the 1966 x-ray and the one made in the NPG laboratories in 2005 showed that they too differed strikingly. While the outlines in the old x-ray are sharp and all the details clearly visible, those of the new one are blurred, thus making it extremely difficult to decipher any details. However, on close inspection, significant differences can be recognized. What has happened to the original Flower portrait? And where is the copy x-rayed in 2005? Professor Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel
Times online - Comment by Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel 27 October 2007
Dr Cooper and Prof. Wells seem to have prepared their comments before having had a chance to consider the details of my discoveries. The wood of the portrait Cooper had x-rayed in 2005 is relatively new, thick, robust and shows no wormwood damage, as can be seen in the 2005 BBC documentary presenting Cooper’s results. This portrait is definitely not the old painting owned by the Stratford Gallery since 1895, restored in 1979, and authenticated by me in 1995-6. The peripheral areas of the original portrait are brittle and have been broken away in places (see fig. 1, taken from a pre-1996 high-res. RSC transparency). These areas match the description given by English experts in the 1890s and 1920s, among them NPG director Lionel Cust. The panel, they stated, was old and worm-eaten, the painting a genuine early 17th century portrait and its date ‘1609’ authentic. The portrait I inspected in Stratford in Jan. 2007 was not in congruence with the one x-rayed- even less so with the original. |
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Jüngste Erkenntnisse über das Flower-Porträt William Shakespeares. Interview mit Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel. Moderation: Doris Schäfer-Noske, “Kultur heute”, Deutschlandfunk Köln (28. Oktober 2007) Vor anderthalb Jahren haben britische Forscher Portraits des Dichters Shakespeare unter die Lupe genommen .... Das sogenannte ‘Flower Portrait’, ein Ölgemälde, erklärten sie ... zu einer Fälschung aus dem 19. Jahrhundert. Die Shakespeare-Expertin Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel hatte vor über zehn Jahren die Authentizität dieses Bildes nachgewiesen. Nun stellte sie fest, das ‘Flower Portrait’ sei ausgetauscht worden. |