Newly-Identified-Portrait-001
§ NOT COMICS, but cool: What is believed to be the only contemporaneous portrait of he Bard has been found hanging in some family cupboard:

In 2002, art restorer Alec Cobbe, joint heir of the Cobbe estate, was at the National Portrait Gallery’s Searching for Shakespeare exhibition and came upon a painting known as the Folger portrait, which itself, until 70 years ago, had been thought to be a life portrait of Shakespeare. The similarities between the two were obvious and Cobbe rang Wells immediately, setting in motion more than two years of extensive art historical, literary and scientific research.

The result is the firm belief that the Folger painting is a copy of the Cobbe original. It is also likely to have been used by the teenage engraver who produced one of the most recognisable of Shakespeare images – the copper engraving of a bald, round-headed man on the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623.


Let’s hope this isn’t like those “Hitler diaries.”

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