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Secondary sourcePaintingc. 1793

Profile Drawing of William Shakespeare

Johann Kaspar Lavater · c. 1793

An imagined profile portrait of Shakespeare drawn about 170 years after his death, showing how later generations pictured him.

A later imagined portrait of Shakespeare, useful for showing how he was pictured long after his death.

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Pencil or ink profile drawing on tan paper, facing left, of a man with a bald crown, long wavy hair at the back and sides, a beard, and a plain collared garment. Thin border lines frame the sheet.
Johann Kaspar Lavater, profile drawing of William Shakespeare, c. 1793. Wellcome Collection, London.

About this source

What it is

This is a pencil profile drawing of William Shakespeare made by Johann Kaspar Lavater around 1793, long after Shakespeare's lifetime. It is held by the Wellcome Collection in London.

Why it matters

Because no definite life portrait of Shakespeare survives that everyone agrees on, artists like Lavater created their own imagined likenesses based on earlier images and imagination. This drawing tells us more about how later generations wanted to picture the famous playwright than about his actual appearance.

Look closer

  • Why might an artist drawing 170 years after someone's death still choose to make a formal profile portrait?
  • What details in the drawing (clothing, hair) look like they come from an earlier century?
  • What does this image leave out that a true likeness would need?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of William Shakespeare on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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