Last night on 91Èȱ¬ TWO, The Culture Show followed a team
of experts at the National Portrait Gallery as they uncovered the truth
about one of the world's most recognisable images of Shakespeare - which
for decades has had its authenticity hotly debated.
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The Flower Portrait - owned by the Royal Shakespeare
Company, and named after the local brewing family who donated it to the
theatre - was revealed to be a 19th Century fake rather than a portrait
of Shakespeare painted during his lifetime, as previously thought.
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Also on the show, eminent ballerina Sylvie Guillem revealed
her belief that classical ballet has failed to do enough to attract new
audiences.
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The Flower Portrait
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At the time of The Flower Portrait's donation to the RSC, it was widely
assumed to be a genuine image of Shakespeare painted in his lifetime and
bore the inscription of 1609.
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However, with a hazy legacy, doubts have
grown about its authenticity.
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Painstaking scientific analysis of the picture has now revealed crucial
clues about the image.
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X-rays reveal that the image is painted on top of another picture, a
16th Century Madonna and Child, and while paint-sampling shows that most
of the image is painted with pigments from around the Bard's lifetime,
crucial details on the doublet were painted with a pigment only available
in the early 19th Century.
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Technical analysis rules out the possibility that this was simply a later
re-touch of the original picture, as the layers of paints are well integrated
and must have been done at the same time.
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The Flower Portrait is one of three works under investigation in advance
of an exhibition, Searching for Shakespeare, to commemorate
the National Portrait Gallery's 150th anniversary next year.
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No single portrait of England's most famous playwright and poet has ever
been agreed on.
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Experts led by National Portrait Gallery 16th Century Curator, Dr Tarnya
Cooper, are hoping to unearth the truth behind three 'contender' portraits
of the Bard - the Flower Portrait, The Chandos Portrait and the Grafton
Portrait - to reveal if any of them were painted during his lifetime.
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The results of the other two investigations will be covered in The Culture
Show later this year.
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Sylvie Guillem
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Currently at Sadler's Wells in London, performing with the Ballet Boyz,
Sylvie Guillem spoke out about what she sees as a lack of modern ideas
in British ballet today, particularly in attracting new and younger audiences.
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She told last night's Culture Show: "If you don't project the right image then
you have a good part of your audience that is disappearing, especially
when your audience is getting older.
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"If you want to attract new audiences, then you need to talk a different
language - because frankly, people don't think anymore, they just reproduce.
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"So you will always see male dancers calling 'taxi' each time they
have nothing else to do on stage, instead of asking 'Why am I doing this
stupid gesture that means nothing?'.
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"Well, they are doing it because someone told them they should do
it."
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She went on to talk about the lack of innovation in classical ballet
over recent years: "There is a way of doing classical ballet that is much
better; it's a caricature sometimes.
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"Maybe 70 years ago, it wasn't. But now it is a caricature. It should
evolve much better than that - it's staying as it was and this I don't
understand".
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Notes to Editors:
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The full report was broadcast on The Culture Show on Thursday 21 April
2005, 91Èȱ¬ TWO, 7.00pm.
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If any of this material is used, The Culture Show must be credited.
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A fully-illustrated catalogue containing all the results of the technical
analysis conducted by the National Portrait Gallery will be published
to coincide with the exhibition Searching for Shakespeare in March 2006.
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For images please contact the Press Office at the National Portrait Gallery.
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