My very good friend Steve Wadlow has created an excellent website around the painting in his family's possession. Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been working with Steve for over two-and-a-half years now, examining this remarkable portrait.
It is, as far as I'm concerned, a particularly good, near-contemporary portrait of William Shakespeare. For more information, please visit Steve's Is This William Shakespeare? website.
One of the pages of the website - entitled "TECHNICAL" - shows some images created by Lumiere Technologie in Paris. Of those, one clearly shows the "touching up" which had been done, at a later date, to cover up the visible damage to the left eye socket.
Another image, which is presented in the same animated graphic, shows a clear line running down the left cheek of the portrait from the outside of the left eye.
These lines are a feature of Shakespeare portraiture. If you can find an image of the Shakespeare portrait which now hangs in the old schoolroom at King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford-upon-Avon (where Shakespeare is presumed to have gone to school), you'll see a very similar line to that made visible on the Wadlow portrait by the technological wizardry of Lumiere.
One day, when the ultra-conservative mafia is no longer in a position to dictate what is known, and what is not allowed to be known, about Shakespeare, the Wadlow portrait will be recognised for what it is - the face of Shakespeare.
And maybe - just maybe - that time isn't so far away.
Do check out Steve's website. It really is very good indeed.
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