Newly discovered portrait may depict 'fair youth' of Shakespeare's sonnets

The discovery of a previously unknown portrait miniature by one of Elizabethan England's greatest artists would be significant enough.

- Dalya Alberge

But a work by Nicholas Hilliard that has come to light is all the more exciting because it has a possible link to William Shakespeare and a 400-year-old enigma of a defaced red heart on its reverse, suggesting a love scorned.

Hilliard was Queen Elizabeth I's official limner, or painter of miniatures. His exquisite portraits, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, are among the most revered masterpieces of 16th-century British and European art.

This example depicts an androgynous, bejewelled young sitter with long ringlets, thought to be the earliest known likeness of Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's friend and patron and possibly the "fair youth" of the sonnets, as some have speculated.

Shakespeare dedicated his two erotic poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, to Southampton, declaring: "The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end."