http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/how-restorers-ruined-the-last-portrait-of-shakespeare-1656028.html Whether you believe the Cobbe portrait is Shakespeare or not, this should be an interesting story. A theory will be argued next week that the portrait was in fact changed deliberately to show Shakespeare as he aged – changes that were removed by the restorers. One of the big questions that people immediately asked when the Cobbe became so famous a few weeks ago was, “What’s up with the hair? In the Droeshout portrait – done only 6 years later – Shakespeare is quite bald.” The argument of the article seems to revolve around whether some hair was added, or removed, at different periods in the painting’s lifetime.
None of the numerous discovered portraits claimed to be of Shakespeare have any valid evidence to support them. The engraving in the First Folio and the monument in the Stratford church may or may not be good likenesses of the man but they are all we have.
It was not the Cobbe portrait but, the Janssen portrait that was ruined through restoration. Anyway both are not the Bard’s portraits.
I came across a scholarly analysis of Shakespeare’s ‘portraits’ at a personal blog. The link is given below. http://koyippally.blogspot.com/2009/03/truth-will-out-cobbe-portrait-and.html