A PORTRAIT claimed to be the only known picture of William Shakespeare to be painted during the Bard’s lifetime looks like having only a fleeting moment of fame.

It is now being claimed that the painting is in fact a copy of a portrait in Oxford’s Bodleian Library of an altogether less famous Elizabethan figure – Sir Thomas Overbury.

The painting said to be of the famous playwright has hung on the walls of the Cobbe family’s homes in Hampshire and Surrey for about 300 years.

It was featured on the front page of The Sunday Times, with the claim that it was an authentic image of Shakespeare apparently supported by the foremost expert on Shakespeare, Prof Stanley Wells, of Birmingham University, the general editor of the Oxford Shakespeare series and chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

But detective work by Oxford academic Prof Katherine Duncan-Jones revealed that the portrait bears a striking likeness to a picture of Sir Thomas, a dashing nobleman who came to a violent end in the Tower of London. after falling out of favour The news will disappoint millions who had hoped the country’s greatest poet was the handsome figure in what is known as the Cobbe portrait.

Prof Duncan-Jones, of Somerville College, who has written a biography of Shakespeare and edited his sonnets, said she became suspicious on being told that the portrait was painted in 1610.

She said: “He looks much too young. Shakespeare would have been 46.

“The figure in the painting also doesn’t look like an actor – he’s far too grand.

“Shakespeare wasn’t a nobleman.”

Tarnya Cooper, a 16th century curator at the National Portrait Gallery also said she was sceptical.

When Ms Cooper suggested the portrait might be of Sir Thomas Overbury, Prof Duncan-Jones tracked down the portrait of the courtier that she had remembered seeing in the Bodleian some years ago.

She said: “It was once kept on public display. But it’s now kept a few floors down in an air-conditioned basement.”

She set out the story of her investigation in an article that appears in this week’s Times Literary Supplement.

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust unveiled the picture at the English Speaking Union in London, with its director calling it “a momentous historical and fascinating event.”

The Cobbe portrait is expected to go on display at the Shakespeare Birthplace Museum in Stratford upon Avon.

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