The controversy over the veracity of the Sanders portrait concerns three subjects: the provenance of the artifact, verification of its antiquity, and concerns regarding the content and context of the portrait. While the results of scientific testing of the portrait have been consistent with the claimed age, its provenance is less conclusive. Finally, even if the painting could be determined with certainty to have been created at the time of Shakespeare, and passed down the generations through the Sanders family, critics dispute whether the figure depicted truly is William Shakespeare, on the basis of issues with the content of the painting itself, and the text of the label.
Provenance Its ownership can be verified back as far as 1909 when M. H. Spielmann studied the painting – at which time it was in the possession of T. Hale Sanders, who had taken ownership of it from his uncle through his father. In early 1919 Agnes Hales Sanders, grandmother of Lloyd Sullivan, travelled from Montreal to London to reclaim the Sanders Portrait.
Scientific testing In all, thirteen tests have been done on the Sanders Portrait. These tests include
tree-ring dating, which dated the wood panel to no earlier than 1597.; Radiographic testing, which concluded there was not any other painting beneath the Sanders Portrait and that it had not been retouched; ==Ownership==