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00:00A man with quite a high forehead.
00:08A bald head.
00:09Well, I'm afraid he is a bald man.
00:11Bald.
00:12By the end of his life, he was bald.
00:14With a beard.
00:15A little black beard.
00:17Pointy beard.
00:18With an earring.
00:19A flashing gold earring.
00:21Kind of really open, quite large arm and eyes.
00:25But that is really the only thing we know.
00:28I don't think we know the color of his eyes, even.
00:32Most people have seen portraits of William Shakespeare,
00:35but are they really the same man?
00:38We cannot be 100% sure what William Shakespeare looked like.
00:43It's interesting, isn't it, that so many people want to know
00:46what Shakespeare looked like.
00:48The beauty of his portraits doesn't seem to match the beauty
00:51of his plays and his poetry.
00:53We really cannot come to grips with, cannot understand,
00:56cannot account for that level of genius.
00:59We want some window into where it came from.
01:03You not only want to know what he looked like just out of curiosity,
01:06you want to form some kind of bridge to that man.
01:10The earliest images of the bard have been described as a
01:13disembodied head on a plate or a self-satisfied pork butcher.
01:17People have been searching for a portrait of Shakespeare
01:20to be able to engage with that extraordinary intellect.
01:23It's hard to do so because the authorized images
01:26don't really give you that extraordinary sense of creativity.
01:29Now, a new portrait has come to light
01:32and it challenges everything known about Shakespeare's appearance.
01:36I was surprised how young he looked.
01:38This is a 13-year quest that puts an act of faith to the test.
01:43He is a man of the stage in the theatre.
01:46You can see it in his eyes.
01:47Window cleaner Stephen Wadlow is thrown into the confusing world of art history.
01:53It could have been done in the same art studio at a later time.
01:56That's interesting. That's not what I thought he was going to say.
01:59Or very, very...
02:01Follow the low points.
02:02The world is like this. I think I'll take anything.
02:04Just to not have to be out in the morning scraping vans and being in the cold.
02:08And the highlights of a journey...
02:10This can't get better than that.
02:12Fabulous, fabulous day.
02:13Yes!
02:15Which could reveal an image of William Shakespeare not seen before.
02:21Picturing Shakespeare.
02:26So here we are in Chapel Street where my parents live.
02:30This is Stephen Wadlow.
02:32On this corner house here.
02:33And he's a window cleaner.
02:35He grew up with his mom and dad in the town of Tring, about 40 miles from London.
02:40Through this way.
02:41His dad was a picture frame restorer.
02:43And one day he brought home a painting that was believed to have hung in a fine mansion near Banbury.
02:48My mum.
02:50Say hello, I'm Peter, my dad.
02:52The painting was given pride of place above the television.
02:55We're off Chapel Street.
02:56Here's the portrait.
02:58What the family didn't know is that the portrait, which hung in the same spot for more than 50 years,
03:04might be one of the most important paintings in the world.
03:07And the identity of the sitter could change their lives forever.
03:12Ever since I can remember, I remember that painting being there because I didn't particularly like it because it used to scare me because wherever you are in the house, it's looking at you.
03:24It always used to remind me of those portraits on Scooby Doo.
03:27The painting would one day be a central part of Stephen's life.
03:31Occasionally, the family wondered who the subject might be.
03:35Then one day, Stephen got a phone call from his father.
03:38My parents had been watching Time Team.
03:40It was about Shakespeare's home, new place up in Stratford.
03:43And the image of the Cobb portrait of Shakespeare kept appearing on the screen and they saw a similarity and thought, well, that looks like the painting on the wall above the television.
03:53The Cobb portrait had recently been announced to the world as a genuine portrait of Shakespeare, painted during his lifetime.
04:00However, these claims were later disputed by experts.
04:03So my dad phoned me the next day and said, oh, I think that the painting on the wall in the corner might be Shakespeare.
04:10Not long after, they got a visit from a friend who was an English and art lecturer.
04:15She took a special interest in the painting.
04:18She turned round and she said, oh, you've got a picture of Shakespeare.
04:24It was at that stage she took an eyeglass out of her handbag and she did say it looked more like Shakespeare than Shakespeare.
04:33Quite shaken up, she sat down and asked for a strong drink.
04:38And she said, oh, I'm sorry, I must go.
04:42She was astonished.
04:45There aren't any surviving portraits of Shakespeare known to have been painted during his life.
04:50People have been searching for one for the last 400 years.
04:54And any claim of a new discovery is met with scepticism.
05:00What you start from is not does this represent Shakespeare, but from what does this look like and what is the evidence telling us?
05:06And that's, I think, a really critical thing.
05:08So in looking at this portrait and encountering it for the first time, it looks like a portrait of an aspiring gentleman, both in terms of the costume, but also, I think, in terms of the hairdressing, as it were.
05:20This is a very fashionable thing to be wearing.
05:22A slight quiff to the top here that you see in the period about 1600, 1610.
05:27Someone is presenting themselves in a rather fashionable way as a elegant gentleman.
05:33When we look at paintings that we don't know from the early period, we tend to think of people we know.
05:39There were an awful lot of people from this period who had their paintings painted whom we don't know, whose names we will never recover.
05:46So I have a general sphere of doubt about anything that comes forward with Shakespeare's name.
05:55The experts may have doubted Stephen at the start of his journey, but he had one very good reason to take his investigation further.
06:03One expert has suggested that if it were to be proven to be Shakespeare, it could be worth anything from 100 to 200 million, which is obviously worth investigating further.
06:14Stephen needed to prove the portrait's authenticity, and he started at the Hamilton Car Institute in Cambridge.
06:22He asked them to x-ray the painting in hopes of revealing any underpainting, and to use stylistic analysis to tell him more about its age.
06:32They dated it to roughly 1595, meaning it was created during Shakespeare's lifetime.
06:391595 would be very convenient, because in 1595 Shakespeare was 31.
06:46On the portrait is a 31.
06:49The Hamilton Car's analysis of the portrait also showed several areas of overpainting, revealing clues that might help identify the sitter.
06:58So the overpaint, as the x-rays and other images show, is up here, across here, down there.
07:06Very deliberate.
07:07And here, we have sort of a shield shape.
07:11So under there, I think it's very likely there is a coat of arms.
07:15And then here we have a coat of arms that's been added later by somebody, which again is over the top of some sort of writing, some sort of description, or maybe another motto.
07:26In order to learn more about the tantalizing clues the x-rays revealed, the painting was sent to the Heralds at the College of Arms in London, which regulates the granting of coats of arms.
07:38The Heralds are appointed by the ruling monarch and date back to the 12th century, when they served as royal diplomats.
07:45But by the Elizabethan era, they were responsible for issuing these unique heraldic emblems.
07:51So this is a system that has to communicate identity quickly and efficiently in a military environment.
07:57You don't want to be trying to puzzle out minute details as somebody comes charging towards you, waving an axe.
08:03So this is a system which is clear and basic, like road signs.
08:08The nature of these coats of arms is they're the arms of the elite.
08:11They're the arms of the powerful landowners, noblemen, knights.
08:16What does Peter O'Donoghue make of the coat of arms on Stephen's painting?
08:20It's one of those designs which is quite difficult to interpret.
08:24But it looks as though it's a red background with a black creature of some kind.
08:30And then what we in heraldry would call a bend sinister diagonal stripes, bottom left to top right.
08:38But then when we look more closely, there's all kinds of problems and it's really difficult to know what's happening.
08:43The animal, the head looks like that of a fox, I think, but it could be some other kind of animal.
08:49It's really unclear what's happening to the hindquarters of that animal.
08:53And the other thing is, if it is a black animal on a red background, that breaks one of the most basic laws of heraldic design.
08:59In heraldry, you always have to alternate between bright and dark colors.
09:05So if it is black on red, then that makes it feel like a made-up coat of arms.
09:12A fake coat of arms is not going to help identify the subject of the portrait.
09:19Stephen next turns his attention to comparing his portrait with images proven to depict the writer.
09:25The poet may have been thinking of his own beloved River Avon when he wrote,
09:30Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music creep in our ears.
09:35Here in Stratford Church, Shakespeare is buried.
09:39In the heart of the England he loved.
09:42Holy Trinity Church is home to the earliest known representation of William Shakespeare.
09:49Created soon after his death, the funerary bust had the blessing of his family.
09:55But it too has been the subject of artistic criticism.
09:59It has been described as having the look of a self-satisfied pork butcher.
10:04This isn't a particularly romantic representation of him.
10:09I think he thought of himself as having achieved a great deal as an author.
10:14And also tremendous success, having made himself a gentleman.
10:18And I think that's what we see, you know, the references to his kind of self-satisfaction.
10:23I do think he looks like somebody who has satisfactorily accomplished what he might have set out to do in life.
10:30Made of marble and alabaster, it hangs over Shakespeare's grave.
10:35But in the 400 years it has stood there, it has suffered damage.
10:39Overeager devotees of the Elizabethan writer have chipped pieces off the monument.
10:44It's been removed by treasure hunters looking for lost manuscripts.
10:49And it's also been repainted on several occasions.
10:53Are the colors seen today original?
10:56It was first renewed in 1749.
10:58And then 40 years later, a man named Edmund Malone came along, very famous editor.
11:04And he thought that the polychromatic scheme, that the face was shown in flesh colors, was an abomination.
11:18He believed that the monument was or should have been all white, neoclassical.
11:25The white paint was scraped away and the bust was repainted in 1861.
11:31Give or take a few repairs, that is the version seen today.
11:35But it is difficult to compare painted portraits with a 3D image.
11:40The Droschout engraving, made for the first folio of his plays published in 1623,
11:46is one of a few two-dimensional images accepted as Shakespeare.
11:51But Martin Droschout, the engraver responsible, probably never met Shakespeare.
11:57The engraving was probably done shortly before the publication of the first folio in 1623,
12:02thus posthumously for Shakespeare.
12:05Yet it is almost certainly, as engravings invariably were,
12:10a copy of an earlier artwork, an earlier portrayal.
12:15This means that basically what we're looking at here is a not terribly competent copy of an earlier painting.
12:21This portrait tells you a lot more about the engraver than it does about the sitter.
12:29The artist is really struggling with proportion.
12:32They're struggling with understanding the facial construction.
12:36You've got a half turn of the face and then you've got the eyes looking in a different direction.
12:42But for all its problems, it must have been a good likeness.
12:46It was commissioned and authorized by people who knew what Shakespeare looked like.
12:51The engraving must have been seen and authorized by those that knew Shakespeare well.
12:56So we know that the portrait has to be based on something taken from the life.
13:01If Stephen's painting really is Shakespeare, then it should share similarities with the only two authenticated representations of him,
13:09the funerary bust and the droschout engraving.
13:13One of the first things I did in starting this process was doing comparisons with the droschout engraving on the first folio.
13:23As the droschout was based on an earlier portrait of a younger Shakespeare,
13:27the engraver might have been told to make the sitter look older for the final image.
13:33Now whatever portrait that engraver used, that discussion must have happened.
13:39Another thing is that if you take the fancy lace collar away here and just leave the inner part,
13:48that becomes quite similar to the collar on the droschout.
13:51I accept there is a degree of wishful thinking,
13:54but the more I look at it, the more I believe it's Shakespeare.
13:58I just have this gut feeling, but gut feeling isn't enough.
14:00We need to find more.
14:10Authenticating a painting is not an easy task and relies on many different areas of study.
14:16Steven will need to understand the latest scientific developments and gain a comprehensive knowledge of art history.
14:24As he has been researching his painting, he has tried to educate himself in these disciplines,
14:30all while earning a living by cleaning windows.
14:34This is my day job because the bills have to be paid.
14:38It's a good job to be doing really because it gives me time while I'm out and about to have thoughts and think.
14:46Often my thoughts are about what next with the portrait.
14:50What would it take for Steven's painting to be authenticated as a portrait of Shakespeare?
14:57So there are lots of things that need to be true, I suppose, for a portrait to be authenticated both of the period and of the sitter.
15:09You're looking at really critical things like, what does the provenance tell you?
15:13Where has it been over time?
15:14How can you understand what this portrait has been considered to be over a long period of time?
15:19And does it link back to a family in any way or to people close to the individual it's supposed to represent?
15:25So provenance and documentation is absolutely key.
15:30When Steven started his quest, all he had to go on were his father's memories of buying the portrait
15:36from a father and son company of painting restorers.
15:40They explained that they got two or three hundred pictures which came from the attic of a large house in Banbury, or near Banbury.
15:50I did various work on them and they ended up bringing this particular picture to me
15:55and they said, well, we've got to get rid of it.
15:58We know it's not a Rembrandt.
16:00I said, well, it doesn't look like a Rembrandt, but I said, it does look like Tudor to me.
16:04They said, you are right, it is Tudor.
16:07It's 1595.
16:10There was a date on it, on a paper, and the date was 1595.
16:15But in the end, they did owe me quite a little bit of money and we ended up doing a deal that I acquired this picture.
16:23Steven began searching for the location where the painting came from, using the clues that his father had given him.
16:38All he knew was that it was a manor house in the Banbury area and that the owner was in need of money for repairs.
16:45But he did mention, which is a little bit odd, that it was a manor house that looked more like a sort of row of houses than a traditional mansion or manor house.
16:55So the only place that seemed to fit the bill was Great Tew Manor on the Great Tew Estate, just a few miles from Banbury, so certainly within the Banbury area.
17:04This place had been inherited by a major Eustace Robb in the early 1960s and it had been sort of mothballed for a good 50 plus years prior to that.
17:14Desperate for money to maintain the manor and the estate, Major Robb was selling the family jewels and perhaps more importantly, the family art collection.
17:26Someone who lives nearby and has studied the history of Great Tew is author and publisher John Mitchinson.
17:33Would you be able to tell me anything about Major Robb?
17:38Yes.
17:39He sort of ran it like a very old school kind of Lord of the Manor.
17:43Yes.
17:44He just wasn't, he just didn't have very much money.
17:46Do you think it's at all a possibility that paintings such as ours could have been in an outhouse, not really known about, I don't mean one painting, but like a batch of stuff in a corner left and forgotten for many, many years.
18:00I think if you talk to people about the house, certainly I remember when it was, you know, you could go in there and wander in, there were rooms full of stuff.
18:09So it's entirely possible that stuff could have been piled into one room and left.
18:13There were a lot of paintings in the house.
18:15And the one that everybody talks about, which nobody knew was there, was the Michelangelo cartoon, which I think raised over 4 million quid.
18:24Yeah.
18:25I mean, I think there was, there was a lot of art in the house.
18:29Stephen's discovery that the portrait may have come from great too, is the first step in establishing the painting's crucial provenance.
18:37But there's still a long way to go.
18:40And Stephen also has competition.
18:43Other paintings have already staked their claim as being portraits of Shakespeare.
18:47There are very pretty portraits of Shakespeare.
18:52But the one that is more likely to reflect at least what he looked like is the Chandos portrait.
19:02The Chandos portrait was probably painted by an actor in Shakespeare's company.
19:08So he knew what he looked like.
19:11I like the eyes of Shakespeare in it because they really seem to show a presence.
19:18You feel that, okay, this could be the man who wrote all those wonderful things.
19:26A very atmospheric and stylish portrait.
19:30The provenance is very good.
19:32It's been accepted right from really Shakespeare's lifetime as a portrait of him, or anyway, very shortly after his death.
19:39But there's no actual documentation that says it is him.
19:42It just speaks to you.
19:44And so the fact that there's no silver bullet of authentication, in a way, is dwarfed by the charisma of the painting.
19:53Well, the Chandos portrait's got a lot to recommend it.
19:56It is known in living memory of Shakespeare to be a portrait of Shakespeare.
20:03It also includes the same facial recognition.
20:07If we compare that to this portrait, you've got a very high forehead.
20:12You've got large arm and open eyes.
20:15You've got a beard.
20:16I feel very confident that this represents Shakespeare.
20:20Based on scientific and stylistic analysis, experts think the Chandos portrait was painted between 1600 and 1610, when Shakespeare was between 36 and 46 years old.
20:33Unlike the Chandos, which was painted on canvas, Stephen's portrait is painted on a wood panel.
20:40Using dendrochronology, scientists can determine whether the panel would have existed in Shakespeare's lifetime.
20:47In this case, you've got a wooden panel with three separate panels.
20:51And you can date the wood and you can use dendrochronology to do that, which is looking at the tree rings and seeing how the pattern matches a known set of data.
21:02And we know from this that it's coming up as very late 16th century when the tree was felled.
21:07So dendrochronology is a really useful technique to give you a last date by which the painting must be after.
21:13The dendrochronology report on Stephen's panel gave the last ring a date of 1592.
21:20More proof the portrait is definitely from Shakespeare's lifetime.
21:24By the 1590s, Shakespeare had moved to London, home to some of Elizabethan England's earliest theatres like the Globe.
21:37But it could be a dangerous place where common criminals and government spies drank in taverns alongside actors and painters.
21:46Traditionally, portraiture had been limited to royalty of the very wealthy.
21:51During the Elizabethan era, for the first time, merchants, lawyers and even actors could commission their own portraits.
21:59There was a booming market for portraits as far as the middling sort was concerned.
22:06What they want to do is to show off the social status.
22:11They want to show how rich, how wealthy they are.
22:14So in the 16th and early 17th century, you don't have a sense of artistic identity where an artist is choosing his models and his objects.
22:23It's very much a transactional approach where artists will be commissioned for a particular piece of work.
22:29And the patron will decide what size they wanted, what inscriptions they might have, what clothes they might wear, how they might be positioned.
22:40William Shakespeare's life in London was now that of his theatre, his fellow actors, his plays.
22:47His theatre, The Great Globe, concerned daily with props and rehearsals.
22:53Shakespeare was living a double life, inhabiting the disreputable world of the theatre,
22:58while also representing himself as a respectable gentleman after receiving his own coat of arms in 1596.
23:05The theatre's a louche place, very dodgy and downmarket, dangerous as well as volatile sort of area to be working in.
23:16Shakespeare is presenting himself as a man of substance in the face of the image of someone involved in the playhouses.
23:25A mere actor on a par in many posh people's minds with jugglers and acrobats and tumblers.
23:34One step up, as it were, from those sort of circus performers.
23:44After finding the links to Major Rob and the Manor, Stephen thought he was finished with Great Two, but the village wasn't finished with him.
23:53After I'd established that I really did think that Great Two was probably the place that the portrait came from,
24:00I then found, to much surprise and excitement, to be quite honest, that it had this place here, has connections with portraits of Shakespeare.
24:09The Shandos in the National Portrait Gallery was actually once here.
24:15The Shandos once belonged to a Shakespeare memorabilia collector named Robert Keck, a lawyer who died on a journey to France in 1719.
24:28He left his collection to a relative of his, Francis Keck. And Francis Keck was the lord of the manor, as it were, here behind me.
24:38Before Robert's death, art historian George Virtue visited Great Two. He was collecting all of the Shakespeare related material he could find. This work became an invaluable resource.
24:50In his notes, which historians still use today, he had the, the Shandos was very clearly mentioned, along with a second portrait of Shakespeare.
25:02And this was dated 1595, oil on panel, by Marcus Gearharts.
25:07Historian Mary Edmond discovered this mention of a second portrait while researching the Droschout engraving in the 1990s.
25:15And then, she drew an even more startling conclusion while reading Virtue's notes.
25:21Mary Edmond was a, a splendidly incisive and intelligent researcher.
25:26She claimed that 1595 painting as the original that Droschout was working from.
25:31Her acumen and her historical knowledge and her ability to ferret out, uh, uh, difficult and, um, uh, unknown bits of the archive, um, outdid many of the professionals.
25:47So anything she says has to be listened to with some interest.
25:50Stephen has learned that his oil on panel portrait, believed to have been painted in 1595,
26:00might have been kept at the same place as the second portrait mentioned in Virtue's notes.
26:06This missing painting, possibly used as the model for the Droschout, was also oil on panel and painted in 1595.
26:15Could they be the same painting?
26:17Who the painter is, of course, is a vital part of the jigsaw, because it would be lovely to ascertain who the painter is, or was, so that we can then see what connection they may have had to William Shakespeare.
26:39William Shakespeare.
26:40When we think of, uh, Renaissance painters, we often think that they were worshipped as geniuses.
26:47This was not usually the case in England.
26:51Uh, more often than not, they were considered craftsmen.
26:55They were considered artisans.
26:57Very often they had, uh, to paint very, really everyday objects rather than, uh, big masterpieces.
27:07Sir Roy Strong, who's the top person you could, um, wish to speak to regarding portraits of the period, suggested, um, it was very much like William Segar.
27:20It looks like William Segar, um, style with very kind of liddy eyes, but it's very, very difficult to be absolutely certain with, um, 16th and 17th century artists.
27:32The difference between Gearharts and Segar, pretty difficult to tell.
27:37Segar and Gearharts were both active in 1595, the assumed date the portrait was painted.
27:44Could the clothing in the portrait reveal any clues about the period during which it was painted?
27:50Is it a 1595 portrait question mark?
27:54The hair is quite fashionable in the late 1590s.
27:57A lot of the costume is later.
27:58The collar is quite interesting in this because I wouldn't be expecting, I'd be expecting to see a different sort of collar.
28:04This collar is a, what's called a support tass.
28:08It's keeping up the lace collar and it doesn't quite make sense as a collar that would sit underneath a doublet like this.
28:16You'd be expecting it to come down here rather than sit, sit high up.
28:20So you'd really need to work out what's, what's original to the portrait and what is not.
28:25And you probably only do that by doing, doing conservation work on it, uh, and unpicking some of the overpaint.
28:34Conservation work would mean removing paint, changing the portrait, which Stephen promised his father he wouldn't do.
28:41Instead, Stephen contacted University College London, which offered to put the portrait under their hyperspectral imaging scanner,
28:50which allows them to determine whether the pigments are genuine to the period.
28:56Hello.
28:57Hello, Stephen.
28:58Yes.
28:59Welcome, Adam.
29:00Hello Adam, nice to meet you.
29:01Nice to meet you.
29:02Thank you very much.
29:03Do we see what you've got first?
29:04Shall we get it, Al?
29:05That's it, yes.
29:06I'll show you mine.
29:07Go on then.
29:08It's all very highly technical.
29:11It's a treat seeing this.
29:12There you go.
29:13Anything coming out of a box like this, is it?
29:14That's it, yeah.
29:15Yeah.
29:18Oh.
29:19There you go.
29:20Oh, can I?
29:21Yes, of course you can.
29:22Gosh, thank you.
29:23Okay.
29:24I'm not, I'm not an artist trying, but that looks to be an incredibly good condition to me.
29:29I mean, I probably shouldn't say this, but it looks like it was painted yesterday.
29:33Yes.
29:34Yeah, that's it.
29:35Yeah.
29:36I promise you it wasn't though.
29:37You're particularly interested in underneath the shield at the top, you say?
29:41Yes.
29:42So up here and...
29:43Oh, yes.
29:44You can see a shadow of a shield just here, can't you?
29:47It looks like it's matching the one at the other side.
29:49Yeah.
29:50A normal photograph has got three colour components.
29:54Our camera gives us about 600 colour components.
29:57So that allows us to tell us whether one red is different from another red,
30:01which your eye might not be able to tell because your eye only looks at one red.
30:04Has anybody asked whether the lace might have been added later?
30:08Because it's to a different, very different style compared to the rest of the painting.
30:12If it was, as you were just saying, just that, and this was added later, that would be really interesting.
30:18Because that, that is more like going back to the Droschel engraving.
30:23And I've always assumed that if this was the painting used, that the engraver had just left this off,
30:30because it was too complicated to engrave.
30:32Oh, I see, yeah.
30:33They're currently fitting a new camera with a longer wavelength.
30:43And the hope is that that will see beneath the overpaint.
30:50So I don't know if it's my imagination, but I am sure our man is delighted to be out of the box.
30:57He's sitting there smiling at everybody, watching all this work going on and all this fuss he's having.
31:02And you can tell he's lapping it up.
31:04He is a man of the stage and the theatre.
31:07You can just, it's just, it's oozing out of him.
31:09You can see it.
31:10You can see it in his eyes.
31:12They're starting to see preliminary images.
31:15But it could be months before Stephen knows what secrets have been revealed.
31:21But he is not afraid of what science might have to say about his portrait.
31:25I certainly think it's a very real possibility that our portrait was the model for the Droschel.
31:31But how do we prove that?
31:34I thought, let's have a look and do some comparisons.
31:37So I went about making my own photoshops with a photocopier.
31:44We were comparing the Wadlow and the Droschel.
31:49And straight away, I mean, the nose isn't quite right there, I accept that.
31:52But the mouth was, was, was caused for celebration at the time.
31:56Today, Stephen's cutting and pasting has been replaced by cutting edge technology.
32:01He used the online Betaface facial recognition software.
32:05It analyzes 101 advanced facial points and uses biometric measurement functions.
32:12As you can imagine, I was, I was quite excited when I saw this.
32:15We've got the Droschel here.
32:17The Wadlow here, which this software is showing at 91.2% a match, which is quite remarkable.
32:26We have then the world famous Shandos at 88% match with the Droschel.
32:33Wadlow's leading the pack there.
32:36I mean, that's, that, I was quite staggered.
32:38I was actually quite pleased that it meant my, um, my cutting and pasting, uh, all those years back wasn't too, uh, harebrained after all.
32:46It's an exciting day.
32:50Stephen has returned to UCL to get the results of the scans they carried out on his portrait.
32:56Hello, everybody. How are you?
32:58So my hopes for the day are that they come up with some wonderful piece of information that, um, move us forward and prove our theory.
33:07But being realistic, I doubt that that will happen.
33:10If you put him on there, I can learn this.
33:12The good news is that all the paints are genuine to the period.
33:16But they also raise other questions.
33:19More of the questions are about the red pigments used.
33:22Yeah, so the red, compared with these.
33:25Yes.
33:26Yep.
33:27It's suggestive that they are of a relatively similar recipe or mixture.
33:33So it could be, could have been done at the same time, could have been done in the same art studio at a later time.
33:39That's interesting.
33:40That's not what I thought he was going to say, but that's interesting.
33:42Or very, very, very closely to, or someone's very good at matching by eye.
33:48Yes.
33:49The results are showing the red paint used in the slashes on the doublet is the same as the red in the fake shield.
33:55But what about the idea that the shield was painted much later than the original portrait?
34:00Yes.
34:01The tentative results here suggest that they were painted at the same time.
34:06Or relatively close to each other.
34:07Yeah.
34:08Which makes it real more of a mystery then, because we've got somebody painting this, somebody painting that with that, the detail of the eye, and then somebody basically making a mess of that.
34:20In terms of stylistically, you would assume that they were done by different levels of skill.
34:27Yes, yes.
34:28So does that mean that this and these were added later?
34:32Yeah.
34:33Maybe these, but then what would the reason be for that?
34:35You know, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
34:36One thing that might give us traction on here is if it's been added later, it's going to sit on top of the older layers.
34:45Of whatever was there before.
34:47Of whatever was there before.
34:48Yes.
34:49And we know that our longer wavelength infrared imaging is better at looking at deeper layers.
34:54Yes.
34:55So John, do you think that the long wave infrared scan might give us some clues as to what's going on underneath the red?
35:01Longer wavelengths of light penetrate surface layers more effectively, revealing the pigments used in deeper layers and the order they were added.
35:11We start to see where things have changed.
35:14Right.
35:15So this part of the rough is different from this part.
35:19And you see here at this wavelength, we don't have any of the lace, but we have the lace here.
35:27And the lace looks, it's very proud on the painting, but it's almost invisible in the infrared.
35:34I mean, it seems to me that the lace has been painted over everything else.
35:39If you look at the general outside, the outermost of this collar, you can see through that collar to what you would assume to be a more modest and a smaller collar.
35:50And that would be suggested more originally intended.
35:55One possible explanation for the addition of a coat of arms and the fancy collar is that the portrait was being updated as the subject status improved.
36:05This was not uncommon in the mid 1590s.
36:08It was a prosperous time for Shakespeare and when he was granted a coat of arms.
36:13In October of 1597, a deed recorded the purchase of new plates, largest and finest house in Stratford.
36:22However, there is one thing none of these portraits that claim to be of William Shakespeare have.
36:28A family coat of arms.
36:31Granted arms in 1596, he experienced a tragic event that may have affected how he felt about this kind of emblem.
36:39How is he, Anne?
36:42He died, Will.
36:44Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet, died in August 1596 at the age of 11, while his father was in London.
36:53A tragedy reflected in a number of his plays, including Hamlet, Julius Caesar and Twelfth Night.
36:59But he was never to have another son to whom he could pass on the name Shakespeare.
37:04It could be that his son died shortly before these arms are granted and so he had no male heir to take these arms on.
37:14Perhaps they lost their flavor for him, lost their significance.
37:20Over the years, Stephen's theories have had to change when new evidence has been found.
37:25But he's still looking for the breakthrough that will bring his quest to an end.
37:30And sometimes, it gets difficult.
37:33It's been ten years this month since I started doing this.
37:40People often ask how much I'd take for the painting if I was offered money for travelling in the past.
37:45But if I was offered in the mornings like this, I think I'd take anything just to not have to be out in the mornings scraping vans and being in the cold.
37:55I suppose if I'm being totally honest, it has become a bit of an obsession.
38:01And the fact that my dad bought it, got told that he paid too much for it, I think adds quite a bit to the desire to find out about it.
38:12As I say, it would have been nice to find out for my dad.
38:16He's 92, bless him, so I haven't put a time limit on it myself.
38:21I'll just be happy if I can maybe get some answers in my lifetime, really, which sounds a bit morbid, but that's sort of how it is.
38:31One important virtue Stephen has learned during his long search is patience.
38:36If you wait long enough, something will come along.
38:42Stephen approached Lumiere Technology of Paris to have his paintings scanned with their layer amplification method.
38:50In contrast to the UCL scans, which looked at pigments, these scans will reveal underdrawings and the artist's original intentions.
38:59Now, Stephen is learning the results with Jean Penico.
39:04It was Lumiere Technology that the Louvre trusted with the Mona Lisa.
39:10So you've got to have some credibility for that alone.
39:13And it made quite big news because they discovered underdrawings under the Mona Lisa that hadn't been seen before.
39:20So the first time I come to see Jean and dropped the portrait off for him to look at, it was very sort of, so what?
39:29He thought it was a pastiche of different images of Shakespeare all put together, which in itself is encouraging because he was thinking it was images of Shakespeare put together.
39:42Days like this are always nerve-wracking for Stephen.
39:55He knows this could be the day when one of the world's leading experts gives him proof that his painting is not William Shakespeare.
40:01How are you?
40:03Hello, Jean.
40:04Great to see you again.
40:05Been a bit too long.
40:06Jean has discovered that the underdrawing shows corrections, revealing that the artist changed their mind.
40:13Experts generally take this as a sign a portrait was done from life.
40:17So does Jean still think the portrait is a pastiche?
40:21Or is it something much more significant?
40:24And that Stephen's portrait was actually painted from life?
40:28I was wondering if you thought it was painted from life.
40:31I think so it is, yes.
40:33If you just consider the face, yes.
40:37Yes, yes, yes.
40:38The original face, we don't know about his face, was painted from life.
40:42Yes, yes.
40:43Stephen is shocked.
40:45But Jean goes even further.
40:47Like UCL, Jean thinks the collar and coat of arms were added later.
40:52He has merged an image of Stephen's portrait with the draw shot, so that he can compare the two images and explain his surprising new theory.
41:02If we compare the portrait with the grave portrait, okay?
41:07Yeah.
41:08The conformity with the mouth.
41:09Yeah.
41:10I'm sorry, it's absolutely the same, undoubtedly by just observation.
41:14Yeah.
41:15You have some elements in the lips and in the eyes, we are absolutely, you know, well.
41:23I would love to study this portrait as a representation of a role, I don't know, a hero of Shakespeare.
41:33Yeah.
41:34With the costume of the court at such time.
41:37Yeah.
41:38So, of course, with some operat, a coat of arms, you know?
41:44Yes.
41:45Or a part he was playing.
41:46Yes.
41:47Sort of thing.
41:48Shakespeare as a character.
41:49Yes.
41:50And Shakespeare as, you know, someone in his theatre.
41:54Yes.
41:55And so he's the actor.
41:56Yes.
41:57If we go in this idea that we are in front of Shakespeare as a character or as an actor, okay?
42:03It could be also this coat of arms could be just, you know, not a joke, but something like that.
42:11Yeah.
42:12To give him, you know, you are the lord of theatre.
42:15Yes.
42:16Because if you study, I don't know, some coat of arms from Denmark or I don't know, okay?
42:24Yeah.
42:25Yeah.
42:26Okay.
42:27So then it could be named a family who is in his mind.
42:32Hamlet, funny, funny enough.
42:33Yeah.
42:34Okay.
42:35Okay.
42:36I refuse to say more because I'm a socialist.
42:38Yeah.
42:39I'm no expert on the works of Shakespeare, but of course, the more I get drawn into it, the
42:43more I look at those as well.
42:46And I try not to get drawn down a path where I'm making it, making it convenient to work.
42:55But the experts all seem to agree that Shakespeare played the part of the ghost of King Hamlet,
43:04Hamlet's father, that appeared on stage three times.
43:08And very probable as well that there was a portrait of the king as in Shakespeare on the stage.
43:18It is Shakespeare as a printer or some hero of his.
43:21Yes.
43:22I think so, yeah.
43:23So for me, really, I agree with the hypothesis as really the portrait of Shakespeare.
43:46That was an amazing day.
43:50After all these years and all the, is it Shakespeare?
43:54Isn't it Shakespeare?
43:55People agreeing, people disagreeing.
43:57But when people are agreeing, they don't really matter because they're just like me.
44:03And then today we have Jean, who discovered the underdrawings on the Mona Lisa.
44:09Has done lots and lots of quality research for top, top quality paintings and art around the world.
44:17Says that our painting, he believes, is Shakespeare.
44:21And you just can't get better than that.
44:23I really, really, I'm almost speechless, which is unusual.
44:27Um, but, uh, fabulous, fabulous day.
44:34Yes!
44:38When the conclusions of the visit to Paris were released, the story quickly travelled all around the world.
44:45First of all, just explain how you came to have this painting in your possession.
44:50In the 60s.
44:51Wow, what a few days this has been.
44:53The internet's gone mad with, um, our story going around the world.
44:57In New York, America, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, everywhere.
45:02Quite amazingly, really.
45:03Most of them have been very kind.
45:06Uh, people supporting, backing me up.
45:09Many people saying, yes, that is definitely Shakespeare.
45:12Things are moving.
45:13Things, you know, this is, this is absolutely brilliant.
45:16The idea of a young Shakespeare, without a beard, but with hair, had the world buzzing.
45:24But how does the idea that the portrait was used as a prop on stage fit with the traditional view that plays at this time were performed without props?
45:33The imagery and the words being enough to conjure up the required scenery.
45:38Soft.
45:39What light through yonder window breaks?
45:42It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
45:47There used to be a myth that it was a theatre, a drama based on words, words, words.
45:55But what has come to the fore is that actually theatres, playhouses, the playhouses of the period, were painted worlds.
46:04They, people went there to be amazed at these shows.
46:15Theatre companies would recreate thunder and lightning.
46:18Pyrotechnics and secret trap doors were employed to amaze the audience.
46:23And props were also used.
46:26Emanuel Steltzer has been researching playwrights of the era,
46:30and has discovered that there were a large number of portraits used on stage as props.
46:35There are 76 extant plays in which a portrait is used as a prop.
46:42Shakespeare uses portraits in some of his plays.
46:47Shakespeare's astounding insight into human nature is nowhere better illustrated than in his character of Hamlet.
46:54As he faces the dread decision of whether or not to kill his father's murderer,
46:59Hamlet's mental struggle is a study in psychology.
47:03To be or not to be, that is the question.
47:09There are the two pictures in Hamlet in the closet scene, and that's a very interesting scene.
47:15The closet scene has been described as the greatest scene in Shakespeare's greatest play.
47:21In it, Hamlet confronts his mother Gertrude with portraits of both his father and of his murderous uncle saying,
47:28Look here upon this picture, and on this.
47:33The portrait of his father is said to be beautiful.
47:37So you have him saying that this portrait shows a man with Hyperion's curls.
47:46The front of Jove himself, an eye like Mars to threaten and command.
47:50A station like the Herald Mercury.
47:52You light it upon a heaven-kissing hill.
47:54So he's mobilizing the entire Olympus to say how beautiful, how handsome, how heroic this man was.
48:03At the emotional climax of the scene, as Hamlet's rage is becoming too much for his mother to bear,
48:09the ghost of Hamlet's father appears to urge him on.
48:13We have these old theatrical traditions, some of them belonging to not long after Shakespeare's death,
48:20that he played old man parts.
48:23The ghost in Hamlet, which is certainly an old man part, in fact a dead man part.
48:28Shakespeare himself was a working actor, Adam in As You Like It, the ghost in Hamlet.
48:34If a portrait was used on stage, a fascinating new theory takes shape.
48:39This would mean that people in the audience would be looking at a portrait of Shakespeare.
48:46It is a possibility, although there is a lot of conjecture behind it.
48:54Could Jean Panico's idea that the painting was used as a prop explain some of the puzzles associated with it?
49:01This would work wonders, because it can be transported very easily
49:07if a character on stage should exchange it or give it to another character.
49:13It would be a great size for it.
49:15Was it used one year for one play?
49:18And then the next year, was it brought out as a prop again?
49:22But this time, the play called for the slashes on the doublet for the lace collar,
49:29for a kind of elevation of status for whoever was being represented in that play.
49:35It's an attractive theory that solves several of the mysteries that have come to light during Stephen's quest.
49:41It's attractive, but is it believable?
49:45Shakespeare himself wrote that a pretty face can sometimes be a disguise.
49:50In Macbeth, King Duncan says there's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.
49:57When we look in the National Portrait Gallery archives, there are boxes and boxes of portraits
50:03that over time have been considered to represent Shakespeare.
50:07This is one example of a portrait which has been considered to represent Shakespeare,
50:12which shows a man of the right sort of period.
50:16They're often quite elegantly dressed and quite elegantly presented.
50:20They're pleasing figures to look at.
50:23And they're men with lovely kind of fair faces who you want to engage with.
50:28And I think it's quite easy to project onto those images,
50:31that could this be the extraordinary image of this literary mastermind?
50:35Because they're probably more pleasing than the monument and the engraving image.
50:48Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon was the Shakespeare family's local church.
50:54It is one of the few places that William Shakespeare is known to have visited during his lifetime.
51:00He was baptized here in 1564.
51:05It's also the site of his grave and the monument placed here to commemorate him shortly after his death in 1616.
51:13So here I am in Stratford-upon-Avon, up here doing some research on the painting.
51:18And I've taken this opportunity to come to Holy Trinity Church,
51:22to come and see Shakespeare's grave and the funerary monument.
51:30And even better, I've brought Shakespeare home.
51:41So here we are, here's our Shakespeare,
51:44and he's now met the funerary monument.
51:48You know, there were pilgrims who went to Stratford, 17th century,
51:53and they were thrilled just to walk on ground that they knew Shakespeare had walked on.
51:57So an awful lot about it is a desire for making contact, reaching some kind of level of authenticity.
52:05So before all this started, over 12 years now,
52:09I didn't really know anything at all about Shakespeare,
52:11and certainly didn't know anything about his life.
52:15And then, of course, this whole process has changed all that.
52:19People are approaching us from around the world, backing us up.
52:23The vast majority of people seeing the paintings, seeing the portraits,
52:29whether through media or whatever channels,
52:32are in agreement that our portrait is Shakespeare.
52:36If we knew that this is Shakespeare, this would mean that we have found a new way to visualise him,
52:48to try and enter more, yes, in presence, in communication with him.
52:57Hopefully Shakespeare can be remembered for a vibrant man with some hair and a knowledgeable, intriguing look,
53:07rather than maybe the chap we see out there that everybody sees him as.
53:13But, of course, one day somebody's going to want to buy it.
53:17And if they are, and if it goes to the right home and is displayed to the public, then, yeah,
53:23I'm looking forward to a day where I can retire with a few pounds, a good amount of money,
53:27knowing that we've done good for history and for the family.
53:32The bar is set very high for any portrait that claims to be of Shakespeare.
53:38It needs to pass rigorous scientific tests to prove its authenticity
53:43and convince the experts who are able to spot an imposter.
53:47Will an authentic portrait of William Shakespeare, painted from life, ever be found?
53:53Where would we be if we didn't believe in the possibility of future discoveries?
53:59And certainly the idea that there might be in some attic a picture of Shakespeare
54:03that shows him not as a slightly beleaguered, middle-aged man of substance,
54:10but as a young, energetic kind of man who wrote Romeo.
54:15I think for a portrait of Shakespeare to be found, it's still absolutely possible.
54:20There are lots of portraits that once come across that are sort of totally unidentified.
54:24I suspect we won't ever get that evidence to be really clear exactly and nail it.
54:30Stephen still has his window-cleaning business,
54:33but the portrait is now kept in safe storage.
54:37He feels there is enough evidence for his painting to be recognised
54:41as a possible lifetime portrait of William Shakespeare.
54:45Have you had doubts that it's not...?
54:47Not really, no.
54:48Yeah.
54:49No.
54:50I will reserve a small percentage that I could be wrong,
54:54because it would be foolish to do that,
54:56but like I'm saying, truly, the more he goes on, the more it's just, you know...
55:01And if it's not Shakespeare, it's somebody that didn't have to look like him.
55:05Hehehe.
55:07Hehehehe.
55:08Hehehe.
55:09Hehehe.
55:10Hehehehe.
55:11Ha.
55:12Hehehehehe.
55:13Hehehe...
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