Posted on 03/01/2006 1:39:20 PM PST by nickcarraway
William Shakespeare died in pain of a rare form of cancer that deformed his left eye, according to a German academic who claims to have discovered the disease in four genuine portraits of the world's most famous playwright.
As London's National Portrait Gallery prepares to reveal in a show next week that only one out of six portraits of the Bard may be his exact likeness, Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, from the University of Mainz, provided forensic evidence that there are at least four contemporary portraits of Shakespeare.
Hammerschmidt-Hummel, who will publish in April the results of her 10-year research in "The True Face of William Shakespeare," used forensic imaging technologies such as trick image differentiation technique, photogrammetry, computer montages, and laser scanning to examine nine images believed to portray the playwright.
Four of these portraits were found to share 17 identical features.
"The Chandos and Flower portrait, the Davenant bust and the Darmstadt death mask, all showed one and the same man: William Shakespeare. They depict his features in such precise detail and so true to life that they could only have been produced by an artist for whom the poet sat personally," Hammerschmidt-Hummel told Discovery News.
The portraits showed a growth on the upper left eyelid and a protuberance in the nasal corner, which seemed to represent three different stages of a disease
"At Shakespeare's time, the artists depicted their sitters realistically and accurately, absolutely true-to-life, including all visible signs of disease," Hammerschmidt-Hummel said.
A team of doctors analyzed the paintings and concluded that Shakespeare, who died aged 52 in 1616, most likely suffered from a rare form of cancer.
According to ophthalmologist Walter Lerche, the playwright suffered from a cancer of the tear duct known as Mikulicz's syndrome. A protuberance in the nasal corner of the left eye was interpreted as a small caruncular tumor.
Dermatologist Jost Metz diagnosed "a chronic, annular skin sarcoidosis," while the yellowish spots on the lower lip of the Flower portrait were interpreted as an inflammation of the oral mucous membrane indicating a debilitating systemic illness.
"Shakespeare must have been in quite considerable pain. The deformation of the left eye was no doubt particularly distressing. It can also be assumed that the trilobate protuberance in the nasal corner of the left eye, causing a marked deviation of the eyelid margin, was experienced as a large and painful obstruction," Hammerschmidt-Hummel said.
Her findings have stirred a controversy in England.
The National Portrait Gallery, who conducted a four-year study of possible surviving portraits for the exhibition "Searching for Shakespeare," stressed that "today we have no certain lifetime portrait of England's most famous poet and playwright."
Hammerschmidt-Hummel's conclusion was based on a "fundamental misunderstanding" since "portraits are not, and can never be forensic evidence of likeness," the gallery said.
Most experts, including those at the National Portrait Gallery, agree that only the Chandos painting may be a likely Shakespeare portrait.
The terracotta Davenant bust, which has been standing for 150 years in the London gentleman's Garrick Club, was long believed to be work of the 18th-century French sculptor Roubiliac.
Hammerschmidt-Hummel traced it back to the times of Shakespeare through the diary of William Clift, curator of the Royal College of Surgeons' Hunterian Museum in London.
She learned that Clift found the bust in 1834 near a theatre which was previously owned by Sir William Davenant, Shakespeare's godson. Davenant owned many Shakespeare mementoes, including the Chandos painting.
The most controversial seems to be the Flower portrait, which the National Portrait Gallery dismissed as a fake as it featured a pigment not in use until around 1818.
Hammerschmidt-Hummel contents that the painting is nothing else than a copy of the portrait she examined 10 years ago. The original Flowers had evidence of swelling around the eye and forehead, while the one about to go on display at the gallery does not have these features, she said .
The Darmstadt death mask, so-called because it resides in Darmstadt Castle in Germany, has been long dismissed as a 19th-century fake.
But according to Hammerschmidt-Hummel, the features, and most of all the impression of a swelling above the left-eye, make it certain that it was taken shortly after Shakespeare's death.
"A 3-D technique of photogrammetry made visible craters of the swelling. This was really stunning evidence," Hammerschmidt-Hummel said.
And a great mistress for a short time she was in that movie.
Well, did they?
He's been taking cues from Bubba.
Hildy's not only a kook but an over-dramatic one at that.
I have to agree with what the gallery said.
Re your #27 -
It seems that England was swept by two plagues during Shakesperes' lifetime.
A couple of his theaters had to be shut down to minimize the exposure between people in the audience - could that condition have been a lingering symptom of a non lethal bout of the plague?
Does anyone have a picture of the "Death Mask"?
I don't know what, if any, has been written about post-illness physical manifestations of plague survivors, but usually Mikulicz's describes swelling caused by active white blood cells and active disease.
There were supposedly people who had the germ but had no symptoms (i.e. carriers) because of a mutation in their immune systems. Interesting to wonder if they did have some physical changes that no one noticed at the time.
I suspect analysis if his bones might give us some clues but I can't see that ever happening especially since the message on his tombstone says to leave his bones alone!
La!La!La!La!La!La!La!La!.............
Please add me to the png list.
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Note: this topic is from 3/01/2006. Thanks nickcarraway.
The Soest Portrait (7 posted on 10/30/2007 2:11:06 PM PDT by blam)
Wow I totally didn’t recognize that image at first. Cool picture!
Back in his white-hot days.
;)
Looks a bit high. Probably has locomotive breath. :-)
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