{"id":397326,"date":"2025-09-04T13:21:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T13:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/397326\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T13:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T13:21:11","slug":"newly-discovered-portrait-may-depict-fair-youth-of-shakespeares-sonnets-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/397326\/","title":{"rendered":"Newly discovered portrait may depict \u2018fair youth\u2019 of Shakespeare\u2019s sonnets | Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

The discovery of a previously unknown portrait miniature by one of Elizabethan England\u2019s greatest artists would be significant enough. But a work by Nicholas Hilliard that has come to light is all the more exciting because it has a possible link to William Shakespeare<\/a>, and a 400-year-old enigma of a defaced red heart on its reverse, suggesting a love scorned.<\/p>\n

Hilliard was Queen Elizabeth I\u2019s official limner, or miniature painter. His exquisite portraits, small enough to fit in the palm of one\u2019s hand, are among the most revered masterpieces of 16th-century British and European art.<\/p>\n

This example depicts an androgynous, bejewelled young sitter with long ringlets, thought to be the earliest known likeness of Henry Wriothesley, 3rd earl of Southampton, Shakespeare\u2019s friend and patron \u2013 and possibly the \u201cfair youth\u201d of the sonnets, as some have speculated.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare dedicated his two erotic poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, to Southampton, declaring: \u201cThe love I dedicate to your lordship is without end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such miniatures were painted on vellum as thin as onion skin that was pasted on to playing cards for a stiff support. This portrait\u2019s reverse reveals a card whose red heart has been painted over with a black spear or spade, seemingly indicating a broken heart.<\/p>\n

Reverse of the miniature with a red heart defaced by a black spade or spear, suggesting a love scorned. Photograph: handout<\/p>\n

The portrait has been identified by the leading art historians Dr Elizabeth Goldring and Emma Rutherford, who were taken aback by the defacement.<\/p>\n

Goldring, an honorary reader at the University of Warwick and author of an award-winning Hilliard biography, told the Guardian: \u201cYou always know that there\u2019s a chance that there could be a clue on the back or tucked inside the frame, but there almost never is. On this occasion, there was \u2013 and it was absolutely thrilling. Shivers down the spine. Someone had gone to great effort to spoil the back of this work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rutherford, the founder of the Limner Company, a consultancy and dealership, said: \u201cI can\u2019t find any other evidence of this sort of vandalism. Everybody would have known that a miniature would be backed by a playing card, but the playing card back was never visible. Originally, this would have been encased in a very expensive, possibly jewelled locket. You\u2019d have to get the miniature out of the locket in order to vandalise the back like this. So it is an extraordinary discovery, a 400-year-old mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their research, jointly written with Prof Sir Jonathan Bate, a leading Shakespeare scholar, is published in the Times Literary Supplement on 5 September.<\/p>\n

They write: \u201cThe fact that the heart has been painted over with a spade, or spear, inevitably calls to \u2026 mind thoughts of Shakespeare, whose coat of arms, drawn up c1602, incorporated a spear as a pun on his surname \u2013 though virtually nothing is known with certainty of Shakespeare\u2019s interactions with Southampton.\u201d<\/p>\n

Self-portrait at age 30 by Nicholas Hilliard. Photograph: Granger Historical Picture Archive\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Goldring said: \u201cThe discovery of this miniature will, I suspect, reignite debate about the nature of the relationship between Shakespeare and his patron Southampton, including the possibility that Southampton may have been an inspiration for some of the sonnets.\u201d<\/p>\n

The historians suggest there is the possibility that this portrait was a gift from Southampton to Shakespeare who returned it, perhaps in 1598, the year that he married<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Within the late Elizabethan court, Southampton was known for his androgynous beauty, his vanity and his love of poetry.<\/p>\n

In the 1590s, John Clapham\u2019s Narcissus \u2013 a retelling of the Ovidian tale of a beautiful youth who falls in love with his own image \u2013 was dedicated to him, and in the dedication to The Unfortunate Traveller, Thomas Nashe praised Southampton: \u201cA dere lover and cherisher you are, as well of the lovers of Poets, as of Poets themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

The portrait\u2019s owners have a family connection to Southampton, but they were unaware of Hilliard\u2019s hand or the work\u2019s significance, having long kept it in a box. They contacted Goldring and Rutherford after reading of their discovery of another Hilliard miniature.<\/p>\n

Rutherford said: \u201cThis has never been published. It\u2019s never been seen in public.\u201d<\/p>\n

They believe that it depicts Southampton in the early 1590s, when he was in his late teens, shortly before Shakespeare attracted his patronage.<\/p>\n

Addressing the \u201cendlessly debated\u201d identity of the addressee of Shakespeare\u2019s sonnets, they write: \u201cAgain and again, the sonnets return to the fair youth\u2019s androgynous beauty. So, for example, in sonnet 99 his hair is compared to \u2018marjoram\u2019, the tendrils of which are long and curly: could this be an allusion to Southampton\u2019s distinctive long ringlets?\u201d<\/p>\n

They argue that everything about this miniature, including the sitter\u2019s gesture of clasping his cascading ringlets of auburn hair to his heart, suggests an intimate image.<\/p>\n

Long hair was unusual at the late Elizabethan court, Rutherford said. \u201cWe know there was some criticism of how long hair made men \u2018womanish\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two pearl bracelets adorn the sitter\u2019s wrist. Rutherford said bracelets, though frequently encountered in portraits of women in this period, were rarely seen in portraits of men.<\/p>\n

She added that when someone first looks at the portrait, they struggle initially to determine whether it represents a man or a woman. \u201cIt\u2019s just extraordinary. It has to be one of the earliest English homoerotic images.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The discovery of a previously unknown portrait miniature by one of Elizabethan England\u2019s greatest artists would be significant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-397326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115146239824430786","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}