Better late than never: According to The Times of London “a portrait owned for nearly 300 years by a family will tomorrow be claimed as the only known picture of William Shakespeare painted during his lifetime.” The painting was made in 1610, ten years before Shakespeare’s death and has been owned by the Cobbe family since the early 18th century, but the family was unsure of the subject's identity until 2006, when Alec Cobbe visited an exhibition of several pictures some had suggested were Shakespeare.
