Steven Wadlow’s method for testing and comparing his portrait of William Shakespeare with already authenticated ones originally involved cutting and pasting photocopied images by hand. Today, advanced facial recognition software offers, not only a shortcut for comparison, but also hope that the painting may indeed depict Shakespeare himself.
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TRANSCRIPT
-I certainly think it's a very real possibility that our portrai was the model for the Droeshout.
But how do we prove that?
I thought, let's have a look and do some comparisons.
So, I went about making my own Photoshops, uh, with a photocopier.
We were comparing the Wadlow and the Droeshout and straight away, I mean, the nose isn't quite right there, I accept that.
But the mouth was, was cause for celebration at the time.
-Today, Steven's cutting and pasting has been replaced by cutting-edge technology.
He used the online Betaface facial recognition software.
It analyzes 101 advanced facial points and use biometric measurement functions.
-As you can imagine, I was, uh, I was quite excited when I saw this.
We got the Droeshout here, the Wadlow here, which this software is showing at 91.2% a match, which is quite remarkable.
We have then the world-famous Chandos at 88% match with the Droeshout.
Wadlows leading the pack there.
I mean, that's-- I was quite staggered.
I was actually quite pleased that it meant my, erm, my cutting and pasting, uh, all those years back wasn't too harebrained after all.