ABOVE: The “Flower Portrait” of William Shakespeare, named for the family that donated it to Britain’s National Portrait Gallery, is a fake, scientists declared.

One of the most famous portraits of William Shakespeare—the Andrew Lloyd Webber of Elizabethan Europe—is a fraud, British scientists and art historians announced last week. The Flower Portrait, they noted, already adorns the covers of many modern publications of Shakespeare’s plays, which will presumably need revision on the next go-round.

After scratching, soaking, lasering, and poking at the portrait for four months, the scientists found some chrome yellow paint in the mix, paint that betrayed the portrait’s 19th-century origins—not 1609 as the canvas says. Some art historians have always found the portrait a little dodgy, saying that it was executed in a suspiciously modern style, but now they have some hard evidence. Next up: the Grafton and Chandos portraits, another two iconic paintings of Shakespeare, will be examined using the same methods. They might not stand up to scrutiny either.

Ironically, all the investigation into these portraits is being done in preparation for an NPG show called Searching for Shakespeare, to celebrate the gallery’s sesquicentennial—150 years for non-latin-speakers. Looks like they’ll have to keep searching.

LINK: BBC News: Shakespeare portrait ‘is a fake’