Grafton portrait
Left page: a still unrestored portrait (detail) of Christopher Marlowe at the age of 21, 1585
The Grafton portrait is an oil painting that may depict the 24 year old William Shakespeare or Christopher Marlowe . Based on this assumption, it adorns the front of various Shakespeare monographs. The picture (445 × 385 mm, top left inscription: 'AE SVAE 24 [aetatis suae]'; top right '1.5.8.8') is provided with the age of an unknown young man at the age of 24 (1588).
The Grafton portrait got its name in the early 20th century when its owner told Mrs. Ludgate in 1907 that it must have come from Grafton Manor , which was destroyed in 1643 . The picture was rediscovered in an old farmhouse in Grafton Regis , where the owner of the ruined mansion is said to have lived. Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton , one of Shakespeare's patrons, was interested in buying Grafton Manor in the late 16th century, so the painting may have ended up in Grafton Manor that way. In 1914 the picture was bequeathed by Thomas Kay to the John Ryland Library in Manchester.
While various experts are of the opinion of Shakespeare expert Peter Ackroyd that this is a portrait of the young William Shakespeare, John Ryland University has refrained from identifying Shakespeare in the man. There is no sufficiently plausible evidence as to the authenticity of Shakespeare in the Grafton oil painting. A nine-month specialist analysis of the oil painting (unknown English painter of the late 16th century) at the National Portrait Gallery London , which had been borrowed from its owner, Manchester's John Rylands Library, for analysis and renovation, revealed, according to curator Tanya Cooper, that there is no evidence to suggest that it could be a portrait of Shakespeare. In 1588, Shakespeare could not have been able to afford the style of the clothes depicted here, a sumptuous, silk scarlet jacket. The image has given food to speculation in the style of the film Shakespeare in Love in the 21st century, that Shakespeare was a sensitive, passionate face and a character with an unparalleled emotional range.
All that can be said with any degree of certainty about the Grafton portrait is that it shows an authentic portrait of a 24-year-old man from the Elizabethan period from 1588 and thus from the age of the person to Shakespeare and Christopher born in 1564 Marlowe would fit. A similarity between Marlowe's unrestored portrait and the unrestored Grafton portrait seems striking to many, which at the same time raised the question of whether the portraits depicted do not represent the same person, though not Shakespeare, but Marlowe. Experts assume that the Marlowe portrait from the so-called Spanish School (stronger light and shadow formations) and the Grafton portrait from the English School around Nicholas Hilliard .
When searching through all known or mentioned male personalities at the age of 24 in England in 1588, it seems unusual and implausible to suspect William Shakespeare from Stratford in the person portrayed, as he was neither known in 1588, nor in any way about him recognizable authorization to highlight by means of such a portrait can be derived. This is different with Christopher Marlowe , who at that time (1588) was a dramatist who was already celebrated in London, who had the Cambridge University degree of an MA and the patronage of rich aristocrats, who stayed in the circle of the upper class of the nobility and intellectuals at the time ( School of Night ) and was in the service of the Crown and Her Majesty through Francis Walsingham , William Cecil and Robert Cecil . Even if the then applicable "dress code" (Statutes of Apparel), i. H. based on the differences between the mandatory clothing of the lower, upper and aristocratic classes, the Grafton portrait would practically rule out Shakespeare's identity, but not that of Marlowe, who in 1588 already had an exceptional position.
swell
- ↑ z. B. John S. Smart, Shakespeare: Truth and Tradition, 1928 and Richard Wilson, Secret Shakespeare, 2004
- ^ The History of Grafton Regis. Retrieved March 30, 2015 .
- ^ Peter Ackroyd: Shakespeare: The Biography. Anchor, 2006. ISBN 140007598X
- ↑ http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/enforcing-statutes-of-apparel.htm
- ↑ http://elizabethan.org/sumptuary/who-wears-what.html
literature
- MH Spielmann: The Grafton and 'Sanders' Portraits of Shakespeare. The Connoisseur, XXIII, 1909.
- Thomas Kay: The Story of the Grafton Portrait of William Shakespeare. Fitzroy and Harris, Grafton Regis, 1914.
- Ernest Jarratt: The Grafton Portrait. John Rylands Library Bulletin, pp. 225-229.
- S. Schoenbaum: William Shakespeare Records and Images. Scholar Press, London, 1981, pp. 191-194.
- Charles Nicholl Shakespeare and His Contemporaries ...