Gerard Johnson

His father, then known as Gheerart Janssen, came to England in 1567 from Holland. He established himself as a sculptor of funerary monuments in London. Gerard the elder worked on a monument to the 1st Earl of Southampton, which also depicts Shakespeare's patron, the 3rd Earl, as a young man. Shakespeare would probably have seen the monument if he had stayed at Titchfield. Shaespeare's monument is in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford upon Avon, and may have been commissioned by his son-in-law John Hall. Dugdale states that the Gerard the younger created the memorial in Holy Trinity church to Shakespeare's friend John Combe, who left the playwright a legacy in his will. This would probably have been installed in 1615 while Shakespeare was still alive. It is also possible that Shakespeare knew the Johnson family from his London days, since their workshop was close to the Globe Theatre. The mask, known as the "Kesselstadt death mask" was given publicity when it was declared authentic by the scientist Richard Owen, who also claimed that the Stratford memorial was based on it. The artist Henry Wallis painted a picture depicting the sculptor working on the monument while looking at the mask. The sculptor Lord Ronald Gower also believed in the authenticity of the mask. When he created the large public Shakespeare statue in Stratford in 1888, he based the facial features on it. He also attempted to buy it for the nation. The mask is now generally believed to be a fake, though its authenticity claim was revived in 1998. In 2021, Lena Cowen Orlin challenged the attribution of Shakespeare's monument to Gerard Johnson, arguing that it was more probably by Gerard's brother, Nicholas Johnson, was commissioned by Shakespeare himself during his lifetime, and was sculpted from the life.

• Illustration — The monument in situ • Illustration — Close-up of the sculpture • Illustration — The tomb of John Combe