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Collection highlights /

Shakespeare Recites Shakespeare

This 1960s oil painting by the American artist Umberto Romano depicts William Shakespeare.

European male with a beard and moustache, a receding hairline, a broad prominent forehead head, and right hand outstretched. He is slightly turned to the right and is wearing a buttoned white collar. Background and foreground meld together in swirls of black, blue and brown.
Umberto Romano (American, 1905–82). Shakespeare recites Shakespeare, circa 1960s. Oil on canvas, 127.3 x 102 cm.

Gift of Mrs. Clorinda Romano, widow of the artist, and Robin Romano, their son, 1984.

How do you represent the man named Shakespeare if you’ve never seen him with your own eyes? Umberto Romano (1905-1982) reinterpreted the iconic Chandos portrait through the lens of modern art, surrounding the man with an abstract field of swirling paint in Shakespeare Recites Shakespeare.

In A Catalogue of Paintings in the Folger Shakespeare Library, William L. Pressly notes how Shakespeare’s “body dissolves into the background at the edges, and, reflecting the influence of abstract expressionism, drips of brown and orange-red paint energize the black portions of the surface.”

Romano created this portrait as part of a series he called “Great Men,” which included the prophet Muhammad (circa 570–632), artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), and musician Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970). Shakespeare is one of five writers depicted; the other four are Dante, Cervantes, Voltaire, and Dostoevsky.

See catalog record