The diagnosis of art: Durer's squint – and Shakespeare's?

Keeping your eyes lined up, in no matter what direction you are looking, is important for stereoscopic vision. An inability to do it is called strabismus (taken directly from the Greek), or colloquially a squint or a cast in the eye. Illnesses in childhood can interfere with the development of the proper alignment. In some cases there is a hereditary element. 1 And at any time in life, damage to the ocular nerves or muscles can do it too.

There are two main types of squint – convergent (esotropia) and divergent (exotropia). In both types the lines of sight of the two eyes deviate. In the former the axes of vision cross; in the latter the non-fixating eye points outwards. The axis of deviation can also vary, and vertical, horizontal and torsional types are described.

Strabismus causes loss of binocular vision and can cause amblyopia. It is very common – it affects 2–4% of the population 1 – and artists are not immune. The most famous case is that of Albrecht Dürer (

Figure 1

Self-portrait of Albrecht Dürer at the age of 22 (1493) (oil on linen, transferred from vellum, 57 × 45 cm; Musée du Louvre, Paris, France). In colour online

Figures 1 and

Figure 2

Self-portrait of Albrecht Dürer at the age of 26 (1498) (oil on panel, 56 × 71 cm; Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain). In colour online

2), whose mother also had a squint (

Figure 3

Portrait of Albrecht Dürer's mother (1514) (charcoal on paper, 47 × 65 cm; Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, Germany)

Figure 3). Although most of Dürer's several self-portraits show his squint, an early portrait lacks it, consistent with the fact that divergent squint develops later than the crossed version. Another squinting artist was Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, whose nickname ‘Il Guercino’ means ‘the squinter’. And portraits of Edgar Degas show him with a clear divergent squint on the right, probably associated with severe myopia. 2 From Dürer's portraits one would suppose that his squint was also in the right eye, but a late portrait shows it in the left, and it is likely that he painted the earlier portraits himself, looking in a mirror, while the later one was painted by a colleague. 3

Recently, it has been suggested that the so-called Cobbe portrait of 1610 (from the collection of the Cobbe family), by an unknown artist, is in fact a portrait of William Shakespeare (

Figure 4

The Cobbe portrait, by an unknown artist (1610). The inscription ‘Principum amicitias!’ is from one of Horace's Odes (the first in Book II, addressed to a playwright): ‘gravesque principum amicitias’ – ‘the fatal friendships forged by figureheads’. In colour online

Figure 4). This attribution has been challenged, mainly on the basis of a strong similarity of the Cobbe portrait to a portrait of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Bodleian Library. 4 However, the attribution has been vigorously defended, one argument being that the squint in the eye of the Cobbe sitter does not feature in the Bodleian's version ofSir Thomas Overbury. 5 On the other hand, the famous Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare, which appeared as the frontispiece to the First Folio, published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death, does not feature a squint either, or if it does it is a subtle one – the two eyes are not level (the right is higher than the left), but they do not diverge in the horizontal axis, as the eyes in the Cobbe portrait do. And in his dedication to the First Folio, Ben Jonson praised the accuracy of Martin Droeshout's engraving. However, the several discrepancies between the Overbury portrait and the Cobbe subject do at least argue convincingly against the suggestion that the Cobbe depicts Overbury.

Shakespeare mentions a squint only once in his plays, when Edgar describes one of the five demons that afflict poor Tom in King Lear: ‘of lust, as Obidicut; Hobbididence, prince of darkness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; and Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing.’ Of the last he says, ‘He begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth.’ Elsewhere in Lear Shakespeare uses the word metaphorically. ‘Jesters do oft prove prophets,’ says Regan. ‘That eye that told you so,’ replies Goneril, ‘look'd but a-squint.’ This may be interesting, but it doesn't help.

The opening lines of sonnet 43 seem at first glance to be suggestive: ‘When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see, For all the day they view things unrespected’

However, it is clear from the context of the following lines that the word ‘wink’ here has the obsolete meaning ‘to have the eyes closed in sleep’, not to close one eye alone. And the failure of the eyes during the day is because they do not see the beloved.

So we cannot be sure that Shakespeare had a squint, and of course the man portrayed in the Cobbe portrait may be someone else entirely, not Shakespeare or Overbury at all. Those who have visited the Stratford exhibition, Shakespeare Found, will have been able to make up their own minds.

Footnotes

DECLARATIONS

Competing interests None declared

Funding None

Ethical approval Not applicable

Guarantor MR

Contributorship Both authors contributed equally