It also has a label affixed to the back which reads: Shakspere [sic] Born April 23=1564 Died April 23-1616 Aged 52 This Likeness taken 1603 Age at that time 39 ys[1] This label was transcribed in 1909 by Marion Henry Spielmann; today, the original text is not legible.

Partnering with current owner, Lloyd Sullivan, recent research from the Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project (CASP)[3] at the University of Guelph, has sought to return the portrait to the public eye and establish it as the only true likeness of Shakespeare painted in his lifetime.

[2] An oral tradition, documented in Stephanie Nolen's Shakespeare's Face (2002), holds that for 400 years the portrait was passed down in the family while knowledge of its existence remained private.

[citation needed] A 2008 documentary by Anne Henderson sought to tell the story of the Canadian-owned portrait of Shakespeare.

Interviews with descendants of the Sanders family; researchers Marie-Claude Corbeil, Daniel Fischlin and Pamela Hinks; actors Joseph Fiennes and Michael Pennington; as well as art experts Lily Koltun, David Loch, and Philip Mould offer an interdisciplinary inside look at the Shakespeare Portrait debates.

[2][11] The Sanders Portrait has become the face of new editions of Shakespeare's plays targeted as teaching tools for Canadian high school and undergraduate students.

[12] Oxford University Press commissioned the texts, which have been curated by General Editor Daniel Fischlin to provide a uniquely Canadian perspective on the works.

[14] Conducted by Dr. Marie-Claude Corbeil, Senior Scientist at the Analytical Research Lab of the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI), in order to determine that the likeness of Shakespeare was the first and only painting on the oak panel.

[14] A sample of the rag paper label was sent to Roelf Beukens at the IsoTrace Laboratory associated with the University of Toronto.

[2] The analytical laboratory McCrone Associates Inc. in Chicago, Illinois conducted forensic ink tests on the label and concluded the following.

As Adam Gopnik has written in The New Yorker, "...the portrait has, to its doubters, one overwhelming problem: it does not look much like Shakespeare."

Gopnik does, however, refer to a comparison of the Sanders and Droeshout portraits that found 16 facial points in common, including the attached earlobe.

[16] The image has often been overlooked by scholars, with a host of subjective excuses, including that the man depicted seems too young; or that the birth date given is, or has been, used speculatively, and only after the 18th century.