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Of all the history we know about William Shakespeare and what it was like to live in turn of the 17^th century England, one of the hardest things to know for sure about the bard is what he looked like. There are only two verified portraits of William Shakespeare, one is the bust available at his funerary monument in Stratford Upon Avon, and the other is known as the Droeshout portrait, which is an engraving on the title page of the First Folio that was published in 1623. Aside from these two depictions, there have been at least 9 paintings that claimed to be life-like representations of William Shakespeare, all of which were hotly contested, and a few that were outright disproven. One painting, however, has risen to the top through rigorous investigation as a contender for another verified portrait of the bard and it’s known as the Danby Portrait. The Danby portrait was owned by the Danby family for years, until it was sold by Christie’s in a house contents sale in 1975. At that time the painting was misattributed and has since been shown to be a painting by Robert Peake, a professional artist from Shakespeare’s lifetime who not only knew about William Shakespeare, but actually worked with him directly in theater. Our guest this week, Duncan Phillips, is the art gallery owner who recently displayed the Danby Portrait, and he joins us to share about the history of the Danby Portrait, it’s connections to Shakespeare, and the recent evidence that’s been uncovered that suggests the portrait is not only of William Shakespeare, but that it was likely painted from life.  

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I’ll be asking Duncan Phillips about:

• Why is the Danby Portrait only now being investigated as a potential portrait of the real William Shakespeare—where has the painting been all this time? 
• What tests have been done on the painting itself to test things like the pigment to determine if the painting dates to within Shakespeare’s lifetime? And what did those tests discover?  
• In 1608, William Shakespeare was at the height of his celebrity in England, does his status lend credibility to the idea that the Peakes would have wanted to paint Shakespeare’s portrait?
• …and more!

Resources Recommended by Our Guest

Peter Ackroyd: Shakespeare The Biography. London: Chatto & Windus. 2005. 

Katherine Duncan-Jones: Portraits of Shakespeare. Bodleian Library.  2015. 

Catharine MacLeod: Robert Peake: Portraits, patrons and technical evidence. 

Additional Links That May Be Of Interest:

Shakespeare, Serlio, and Giulio Romano (JSTOR article)

Repository from the University of Sheffield of Shakespeare, Serlio, and Giulio Romano (PDF)

Giulio Romano by Manfredo Tafuri (Cambridge book page)

The Danby Portrait Hung in Swithon Hall for Centuries

It has long been said by scholars of Shakespeare that they expected to find, one fateful day, that a portrait of William Shakespeare would be discovered in some family estate, having hung their for centuries unnoticed by the world at large. One such family had one such portrait and Duncan Phillips believes we’ve finally uncovered a painting from life of the bard.

In 1973/4 the family who lived in the hall decided to sell it. It was on display at that point as “Shakespeare” and they believed it could be special. They took it to the The Courtauld Institute as the place to take pictures in England. They believed it could be Shakespeare but [the painting] was not taken apart or examined. They took a photograph of it, and the photograph stayed in an archive in a library.  

In a clearance sale of the Hall, the painting was listed in a Christie’s catalog. Duncan describes the painting for us in detail:

Sitters age is shown as 44 when the painting was done in 1608, Shakspeare was indeed 44 years old. Like people from the period he has a narrow face, and if you look at portraits of English gentlemen from the mid 16^th century to the 1620s-30s, it was the fashion. We find this gentleman who looks like a scholar like a benevolent man, fits in with Ben Jonson’s comment of “my gentle Shakespeare”…

Performing Tests to Determine Authenticity

In order to determine if the painting was legitimately a portrait of the actual William Shakespeare, tests needed to be performed on the painting to establish the age of the painting, the date the work was done, and to try and verify the artists to who painted it. Duncan describes how all of these tests were done:

A conservationist cleaned the painting and took the frame apart, and see how it appears and how it stoofd up over time. The first thing they found was the signature of the artist, significant to Robert Peake. The original stretcher on the back was there, the picture had been realigned at some point, around 1780-1800, and it was well cared for.  When you get a picture that’s 400 years old, it’s almost sure to have danage, so many are overpainted, badly restored, etc, this one has very minor water damage in the corner, nothing significant, it’s been well looked after and admired, somewhere safe and secure for a long time.  The painting itself is pristine. 

About the Danby family who owned the painting

The family who owned the painting of William Shakespeare are named Danby, hence the title of “The Danby Portrait” for this work of art. Duncan describes the patriarch of the family, William Danby, as having been an avid collector of art pieces, having many works of art worth several thousand pounds in his collection.

William Danby, was a collector of paintings and back in 1800s, he spent in one year 12,000 GBP with his framers in York, William Stavely.  [His interest went] well beyond a hobby. Many “Stavely” marked paintings have ties to Swithon Hall, due to Danby’s large collection of art. The “library” in homes didn’t exist until the 18^th century. Homes had libraries added to them to show off their status. They built a library, and that’s what happened at Swinton Hall. It was full of art and books, poets, playwrights. And just like today we’d hang it up, and it was normal to hang up playwrights in your home…  

Many details about a painting’s origins and attribution can be found behind the frame that is used to house the artwork later. The Danby portrait was no different. In order to establish a year and an artist, the conservationists looked behind the frame. Once the frame was removed from the painting, there were several details discovered behind the frame that provide evidence towards this painting being of William Shakespeare.

1608—date and age of the sitter. When the painting was finished, we know Shakespeare was probably born in the Spring, April 1564, and while we can’t know for sure it was painted, so this is supposition, like many of the others, but this portrait comes closer than any other painting we have.  

Who was Robert Peake, the artist?

The Danby portrait is both signed and dated. It is listed as having been completed in 1608 by Robert Peake, with a signature attributing the work to Robert Peake. Robert Peake was a high ranking artist in Shakespeare’s lifetime, with direct ties to royalty as well as to William Shakespeare directly.

One of two and sometimes three painters that worked under Elizabeth I, and later James I, Picture Maker to the Crown, along with Marcus Geeraerts, John De Critz and Isaac Oliver. [Peake] was a top 3 painter in the country, mainly painting portraits, but the crown also employed him to do other things. They did lots of work in all sorts of directions. They would have worked for and been employed by the Office of the Revels, there are accounts for the Revels and people worked for them, so did the King’s Men, the playing company performing Shakespeare’s plays, and [where] Shakespeare was an actor. They all worked in the same buildings, Blackfriars in London, was where the plays were rehearsed, licensed for performance, and had to be licensed by the Revels. It’s the same building where Robert Peake painted pictures.  

Robert Peake is known to have been a painter of scenery as well, commissioned to paint the stage scenes for theaters that Shakespeare is known to have worked at, with, and for. It’s highly plausible that Robert Peake would have known Shakespeare professionally, working with them through the King’s Men. Robert Peake very likely was witness to some of Shakespeare’s plays.

Mary Edmond, in 1976, she wrote about John Webster, the playwright, and she mentions Shakespeare in her writings, and she says “the Peakes were fellow parishioners and near neighbors of John Webster” who of course knew Shakespeare, “it was more than likely one or more playwrights sat to the Peakes” meaning they had their portraits painted.  Not just Robert Peake, but also William Peake his sone was a painter. They also owned a rpinting workship. If you look into the histroy of printers in England, in London, at that period, there are dozens of people printing pamphlets, books, plays, poems, etc, in London working around Blackfriars.  

About the Peake Family Business  

William Peake, and his son another Robert Peake, they ran printing presses. William Peake worked with Robert Droeshout, the man who printed the image of the first Folio of Shakespeare. It’s very likely that the Droeshout family would have used images from the Peake family for their printed engravings.  

The play Winter’s Tale and subsequent Italian plays by Shakespeare are represented in a manner that suggest Shakespeare admired Roman theater architecture, Shakespeare left instructions as to how they should be performed in many ways, and we know he had a great admiration for Roman theater, but theater in Rome in the 1520s, 30s, 40s, thought then to be the most advanced form of presentation of the theater.

Learn more about Italian influence on theater and the role of architecture in Shakespeare’s lifetime with these related episodes from our back catalog on Patreon:

In looking at the play, The Winter’s Tale, we see that Shakespeare was influenced by Sebastiano Serlio’s book in which he mention’s Guilio Romano’s work as a sculptor. It is a well known book featuring architecture of Italian Theater, Roman theater. Looking into the history of the publication of this book and how it would have been made available in England provides a direct link between the Peake family and William Shakespeare.

Because Shakespeare refers in passing to these books in Winter’s Tale, that book came into England in around 1606-1607-1608, had to be translated, and it was translated from Italian to Dutch then Dutch to English, when printed in English, it was printed by Robert Peake.  He would have gone to Peake’s shop to buy those books, he would have had early access as an important man, and another very strong connection.

In 1608, William Shakespeare was at the height of his celebrity in England, and his status lends credibility to the idea that the Peakes would have wanted to paint Shakespeare’s portrait. Queen Anne commissioned Peake and William Peake was a celebrity portraitist. So when William Shakespeare was enjoying celebrity in London as a playwright, it only makes sense that the portraitists known for painting those kinds of portraits would have done one of the bard.

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That’s it for this week! Thank you for listening. I’m Cassidy Cash, and I hope you learn something new about the bard. I’ll see you next time!