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Portraiture

No written contemporary description of Shakespeare's physical appearance survives, and no evidence suggests that he ever commissioned a portrait. From the 18th century, the desire for authentic Shakespeare portraits fuelled claims that various surviving pictures depicted Shakespeare. That demand also led to the production of several fake portraits, as well as misattributions, re-paintings, and relabelling of portraits of other people.

Some scholars suggest that the Droeshout portrait, which Ben Jonson approved of as a good likeness, and his Stratford monument provide perhaps the best evidence of his appearance. Of the claimed paintings, art historian Tarnya Cooper concluded that the Chandos portrait (shown at the top of this article) had "the strongest claim of any of the known contenders to be a true portrait of Shakespeare". After a three-year study supported by the National Portrait Gallery, London, the portrait's owners, Cooper contended that its composition date, contemporary with Shakespeare, its subsequent provenance, and the sitter's attire, all supported the attribution.