Shakespeare's Face

📖 The Scoop

Shakespeare's Face is a detective story, one that blends investigative journalism, forensic analysis and scholarship in an attempt to solve one of the most fascinating literary and art mysteries of our time - 'Is this the face of genius?'In May 2001 Stephanie Nolen reported the discovery of a painting that may be the only known portrait of William Shakespeare painted during his lifetime. - a stunning announcement that ignited heated debate around the world.In Shakespeare's Face she tells the extraordinary story: how the painting came to reside in the home of a retired Canadian engineer (whose grandmother had kept the family treasure under her bed) and how he set about painstakingly authenticating the portrait despite all setbacks. And an unparalleled international cast of experts in art and literature spiritedly weighs the evidence for and against the 'Sanders portrait'.The face in the small oil-on-wood painting is an attractive one: mischievous, keen-eyed, enigmatic - not the 'bladder-faced burgher', disparaged by Mark Twain, taken from images of the playwright created after his death. The smile is suggestive, for many, of the humorous, humane man who wrote the greatest plays in the English language. Is it really him?

Genre: Biography & Autobiography / Literary Figures (fancy, right?)