Southampton Ghost Portrait

It was revealed recently that "Students researching a new display of Tudor portraits in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery have uncovered a ghost figure, which may be Shakespeare's only known patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton" (24 Hour Museum, see also Hampshire.net).  The superficial portrait is that of Elizabeth Vernon, Southampton's wife, but an X-Ray revealed the bearded, ghostly image beneath.  It is indeed likely that the underlying image is the third earl, though at an age much riper than the one known by the poet Shakespeare when those fervent sonnets were written.  "The image closely resembles the composition of portraits of the Earl, some of which have been attributed to the Dutch artist Paul van Somer, the National Portrait Gallery said" (The Telegraph). According to the BBC description: "From the man's flamboyant appearance and long auburn hair, experts believe it shows Vernon's husband, Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton."  I don't know what the BBC analyst had for lunch, but inspect the image as I will I cannot see long auburn hair or anything else flamboyant about an elder looking Southampton.  He looks much more akin to the merchant adventurer he became, "Patron of Virginia" as A. L. Rowse would have it, than an object of homoerotic passion.

We are more used to seeing the earl from his Tower portrait, Hamlet-like clad in black, familiar cat at hand, elaborate glove (a gift from a glover's son?) in hand.  (Note also the fashionable wide, flat collar similar to the one worn by Shakespeare--if indeed it is Shakespeare--in the Chandos portrait).  At the time (1603) he was being held under arrest in the Tower for his part in the Essex uprising.  He does not bear the look of a man condemned to life in prison, and as it turned out, he was soon to be freed by the new king, James.  The Tower portrait is attributed to John de Critz (1555-1641).  We are also even more familiar, possibly, with the Hilliard miniature (1594) showing a younger, more effeminate man with, yes, those flamboyant auburn tresses the BBC writer gushes over.  Few are familiar, however, with the so called "Norton" portrait, flamboyant so much moreso, showing an extremely effeminate youth with rouged lips,  delicately laced collar, love-knot ear pendant, long, slender fingers caressing very long, curled hair.  The portrait was thought to be that of Lady Norton for some 300 years on the basis of "a long-yellowed label, now legible only beneath ultraviolet light...daughter of the Bishop of Winton" (The Observer, where the portrait is reproduced in detail).

As I say, the ghost in this week's newly discovered portrait looks much more, to me, like the mature Southampton, his age evident, like the one at the right from Edmund Lodge's Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain, vol. 4, 1835, p. 185, or the even older looking NPG 52.  A high starched collar is evident, with underpropper, and rich attire, but gone is the fair youth, replaced with a self satisfied aristocrat, worldly wise and more than a little weary.  This is a family man, a man who knows what money means and what it can do, a man without the time or inclination, perhaps, for poets or their words when there are new world's to be conquered.  Southampton died of a fever in 1624, along with his eldest son.