Purported Shakespeare portrait

Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells has stated his opinion that a portrait unveiled yesterday is that of Shakespeare and is the only portrait we have of Shakespeare painted from life. See the New York Times article. The owner of the portrait is apparently an Irish descendant of the Earl of Southhampton who noticed that the portrait strongly resembled the Janssen portrait in the Folger collection. He and Wells, an old friend, then arranged to subject the portrait to dating and other tests, which verified that it was painted sometime in the 1610s.

In my humble opinion and based on what has been disclosed so far, there is no evidence tying this portrait to Shakespeare, and in fact the evidence runs the other way. The Janssen portrait is not now thought to have originally been of Shakespeare -- the Folger website is quite clear that it now thought to be a portrait of Sir Thomas Overby that was retouched in the mid-1600s to resemble Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare. So any portrait that is a source for the Janssen portrait would by definition not be of Shakespeare.

You can see in Wells' statements that he decided very early on that the portrait was of Shakespeare and interpreted the test results to confirm his faith -- in many articles, he says he finds the Droeshout engraving (the portrait shown on the front page for this group) to be dull and that this new portrait is oh so much better.

This sad episode is part of the perennial pattern of Shakespeare enthusiasts getting caught up in their own fantasies and tossing objectivity aside. Poor Mr. Wells has apparently succumbed, though his prior works on Shakespeare's life, which are long on conjecture and short on evidence, show he has long been infected.

Anyone else have a take on the portrait or on Wells' delusion?

both sides are chasing marsh gas. a portrait of WS? we don't have one like we have one of Southhampton or Essex. Shakespeare would not be a candidate for an official portrait by Hillyard or some such dauber. he was a mere player, not one to get in a tizzy about. he died in Stratford without notice. it was not until Garrick's ill-fated Jubilee that anybody paid serious attention to WS. and the jubilee was more about "Davy" than his hero. we must accept the fact that we will never know much about the life of the SWAN OF AVON. Alfred Leslie Rouse said he had a "sexy nose," well maybe he did. Last summer i listened to Bryson's biog. of WS. Very little of it had to do with the great Dramatist. you can't take much from these biographers, at least not without mustard.