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Latest findings in the field of Shakespeare’s portraiture The Canadian ‘Sanders Portrait’, exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto from June to September, 2001, does not show the famous bard from Stratford-upon-Avon. The Mainz-based Shakespeare scholar Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel investigated the identity of the person portrayed with the help of experts from the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation

Press Release, 21.09.2001

The alleged Shakespeare portrait of a private Canadian owner, the so-called Sanders portrait, exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto from June 21 to September 23, 2001, which caused a great sensation internationally in mid-May, does not depict the renowned English playwright William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon.

This is the result of a scientific investigation into the identity of the person portrayed, which was conducted by Professor Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, a Shakespeare scholar at the University of Mainz, Germany, who supports her statement with evidence from a pictorial expert report on the picture prepared by a specialist from the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (Bundeskriminalamt - BKA) of August 8, 2001.

The Sanders portrait was compared with the frontispiece portrait (Droeshout engraving) in the first folio edition of Shakespeare’s dramas (1623), confirmed by Shakespeare’s friend and colleague Ben Jonson. It was also compared with the Chandos portrait (National Portrait Gallery, London) and the Flower portrait (Royal Shakespeare Collection, Stratford-upon-Avon). The two BKA test procedures for determining identity showed so many significant differences and deviations that the sitter of the Sanders portrait cannot be identified with Shakespeare.

In 1995, the Mainz-based scholar was able to prove the authenticity of the Darmstadt Shakespeare death mask, the Chandos and the Flower portraits with the help of BKA specialists and medical experts. In the following years, this was confirmed repeatedly by new findings and the application of more recent scientific research methods as well as further medical expert opinions. Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel published her results in Shakespeare-Jahrbuch (1996), in Anglistik (Sept., 1996, and March, 1998), and in Symbolism, ed. Professor Ruediger Ahrens (New York: AMS, 2000): “What did Shakespeare look like? Authentic portraits and the death mask. Methods and results of the tests of authenticity”.

Further information: Prof. Dr Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, Seminar fuer Englische Philologie, Universitaet Mainz, phone & fax: 0049 (0) 611 52 19 89, e-mail: h.hammerschmidt-hummel@t-online.de