Cobbe portrait of William Shakespeare.

The painting has been held for centuries at Newbridge House, Dublin, the home of the Cobbe family whose collection includes works handed down from the family of the third Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron. Corroborations of the painting's authenticity have been made by Mark Broch, curator of the Cobbe Collection; Stanley Wells, professor emeritus of Shakespeare Studies at Birmingham University and chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust; Professor Rupert Featherstone, director of the Hamilton Kerr Institute at Cambridge University, which conserves easel paintings; Hamburg University which dated the oak paneling of the painting; and Tager-Stonor-Richardson, which applied infrared imaging. However, some skepticism remains about the attribution.

The portrait's Latin phrase: "Principium amicitias" might be translated "friendships of princes" - a possible allusion to Horace's Odes, 2,1, on writing about Roman civil wars: "gravesque principum amicitias et arma" translatable as "the fatal alliances formed by great men" as in Shakespeare's plays about the Wars of the Roses. (Source: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/pteÂ…Yahoo Answers) Of course, alternatively, it could be a more positive allusion, to Shakespeare's association with the Earl of Southampton. Courtesy of Yorck Project under GNU Free Document License.