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3 unusual facts about Cobbe Portrait


Cobbe Portrait

The identification has received support from Shakespeare scholars Stanley Wells, Henry Woudhuysen, Jay L. Halio, Stuart Sillars, and Gregory Doran, Chief Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and art historians Alastair Laing, curator of paintings and sculpture at the National Trust, and Paul Joannides, Professor of Art History at Cambridge.

Since the publicity surrounding it, the portrait has appeared on the covers of several books, and even inspired the Chinese author Zhang Yiyi to have a series of cosmetic surgeries to have his face transformed into that of Shakespeare.

Wells and his colleagues have responded to the criticisms, arguing that David Piper's original 1964 identification of the Janssen as Overbury was based on the misreading of an inventory.



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