![]() The traditional attribution to Droeshout the younger can also be supported on stylistic grounds. Although she began her archival research hoping to prove Edmond's assertion that the elder Martin was the Shakespeare engraver, Schlueter concludes that the newly discovered evidence actually supports the younger. More recently, June Schlueter has found evidence that Martin the Elder was in London when the engraver of the First Folio portrait was known to be in Madrid. On the evidence of these plates, which were made between 16, Schuckman attributed the portrait of Shakespeare to the younger Martin and suggested that the engraver had converted to Catholicism and emigrated to Spain in 1635, where he continued to work. (They include a portrait of the priest and writer Francisco de la Peña that has a striking resemblance to the English poet). These plates bear Droeshout's signature and are stylistically similar to his portrait of Shakespeare. In 1991 Christiaan Schuckman discovered a set of signed plates in Madrid that can be attributed to the engraver of the First Folio portrait. It seems perverse to attribute the Shakespeare engraving to the obscure and unsuitably young Martin Droeshout, born in 1601, as is customary, when there is a quite well-documented artist of the same name to hand, in the person of his uncle". Edmond shows that Droeshout the Elder was a member of the Painter-Stainer's Company. Research by Mary Edmond into the Droeshout family revealed new information about Martin Droeshout the Elder (c. 1560s – 1642), who was the uncle of the younger Martin. As he was 15 when Shakespeare died, he may never have seen him and it has been assumed that he worked from an existing image. Except for his date of birth and parentage, very little is known about Martin the Younger, but since his father was an engraver, it has been assumed that Martin followed in his father's footsteps, and that he made the engraving of Shakespeare. Most sources state that the engraver was Martin Droeshout the Younger (1601 – after 1639), the son of Michael Droeshout, an immigrant from Brussels. Because there were two members of the family named Martin there has been some dispute about which of the two created the engraving. The Droeshouts were a family of artists from the Netherlands, who had moved to Britain. The engraving is signed under the image at the left, "Martin Droeshout. All subsequent engraved reprintings of the portrait were made by later engravers copying the original printed image.Īuthorship Droushout's signature, under the image at the left ![]() Already in 1640 William Marshall had copied and adapted the design on a new plate for John Benson's edition of Shakespeare's sonnets. The original plate was still being used up to the Fourth Folio of 1685 (heavily retouched) and then disappears. It was also reused in later folios, although by then the plate was beginning to wear out and was heavily re-engraved. Later copies of the second state, with minor retouching, were also printed from the plate by Thomas Cotes in 1632, for Robert Allot's Second Folio, a new edition of the collected plays. ![]() The overwhelming majority of surviving copies of the First Folio use the second state, which has heavier shadows and other minor differences, notably in the jawline and the moustache. These were probably test printings, created so that the engraver could see whether some alterations needed to be made. Examples of the first state are very rare, existing in only four copies. The portrait exists in two "states", or distinct versions of the image, printed from the same plate by Droeshout himself. Critics have generally been unimpressed by it as a work of art, although the engraving has had a few defenders, and exponents of the Shakespeare authorship question have claimed to find coded messages within it.Įngraving after Martin Droeshout from the Johnson/Steevens 1787 2nd edition of the plays. ![]() It is uncertain which of two "Martin Droeshouts" created the engraving and it is not known to what extent the features were copied from an existing painting or drawing. While its role as a portrait frontispiece is typical of publications from the era, the exact circumstances surrounding the making of the engraving are unknown. It is one of only two works of art definitively identifiable as a depiction of the poet the other is the statue erected as his funeral monument in Shakespeare's home town of Stratford-upon-Avon. The Droeshout portrait or Droeshout engraving is a portrait of William Shakespeare engraved by Martin Droeshout as the frontispiece for the title page of the First Folio collection of Shakespeare's plays, published in 1623. This is the final, or second state, of the engraving. The Droeshout portrait of William Shakespeare as it appears on the title page of the first folio.
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