Page images
PDF
EPUB

OLUMBUS.

PORTRAITS OF COLUMBUS.

WHEN Jefferson was the American

minister in Paris, about 1784, he engaged an artist to make the best copy possible of what passed for the most authentic likeness of Columbus in existence, the Medici portrait in Florence. This painting was with Jefferson during his Presidency, and he writes about it as one of his chief jewels at Monticello in 1814. In his drawing-room there it hung the second among four portraits on the left as one entered. If Virginia had had any Historical Society in his time,* he would, no doubt, have delighted to enshrine his pictorial memorial within its walls, deeming it, as he wrote, a matter even of some public concern that our country should not be without the portrait of its discoverer."

66

What has become of this Jeffersonian relic? is a question we naturally ask. I have corresponded regarding it with Mr. Lossing, who has illustrated so many of our worthies, and with Mr. Parton, the latest biographer of Jefferson. Neither of them could give me any inkling of its fate. I next wrote to Miss Sarah N. Randolph, a grand-daughter of Jef ferson, and author of a volume on his "Domestic Life."

In her answer were these words: "The Columbus and other portraits, having been reserved at the sale of Mr. Jefferson's effects, were sent to Boston, where it was supposed there would be a better chance of selling them to advantage. They were intrusted to Mr. Coolidge, who married my aunt. They are both now dead, and I wrote to their daughter, telling her of your desire to know about the Columbus. She writes that she knows nothing of it, and would not know that such a picture had been at Monticello, but for the fact that it is mentioned in my book." "I have often," Miss Randolph continued, "wished to

The Virginia Historical Society was not founded until five years after Jefferson's death, or in 1831.

suppose

there

trace this picture up, but
is now no hope of doing so. My uncle
has been dead only three years, and a
single word from him would have told
all." The word "Boston" in Miss Ran-
dolph's letter put me on the track. Had
I been in that city I would have gone at
once to the building of the Massachu-
setts Historical Society. But I was a
thousand miles away; and so I scruti-
nized the publications of the society till I
came to a notice of a portrait of Colum-
bus presented by Israel Thorndike, and
I observed that the donor in his letter
of presentation (November 26, 1835) de-
scribed it as "a copy from an original in
the gallery of Medicis [sic] at Florence,
for Thomas Jefferson." It was a pleas-
ure to ascertain that the picture hangs
in the hall of that society which has
done most to elucidate the annals of the
country over which Jefferson presided,
and of the continent which Columbus
revealed.

In 1814 Mr. Delaplaine was publishing in Philadelphia his "Repository of Distinguished Americans." He made strenuous efforts to obtain for his frontispiece a drawing from the Jeffersonian portrait. Failing in this endeavor, he was forced to have recourse to a painting by Macella, copied from some fancy portrait cased in plate-armor and frilled ruffs, with features as divergent as the costume from the genuine type.

The oldest portrait of Columbus of which I have discovered any trace in the United States now hangs in the New York Senate-Chamber at Albany. It was presented to the State in 1784 by Mrs. Maria Farmer, a grand-daughter of Jacob Leisler, Governor of New York in 1689. According to her statement, the painting had already been in her family for a hundred and fifty years. It may, then, have been brought from Europe more than two centuries ago. In one corner it bears the inscription "Anno 1592. Aet. 23." This legend

may indicate the year in which the copy was taken, and the age of the copyist.

The so-called likenesses of Columbus are mostly fancy sketches. The great navigator, as represented at Madrid in the palace of the Duke of BerwickAlba, is seated on a throne and arrayed in high-colored silks and embroidery. This painting is said to be a copy from a mythical likeness in Havana, which has been often sought for, but always in vain. It is the original of the largest known engraving, which bears this inscription: "The original was painted in America by Van Loo." (El cuadro original fué pintado en América por Van Loo.) When was Van Loo in America? The gods, one would think, must annihilate both time and space to make the owner of such a sham happy. Yet a copy of this engraving was highly prized by the late Mr. Lenox, and now adorns his library in the New York Central Park. He supposed that the original was painted in the lifetime of Columbus. In the Cuban Consistorial Hall, at Havana, Columbus appears dressed as a familiar of the Inquisition. In one likeness he resembles an effeminate Narcissus; in many others the costume and arrangement of hair are in a style unknown to his century, while his lineaments are treated with no less license than his vestments. Seeing Columbus thus transformed, or rather deformed, -we are reminded of personal caricatures in Punch, and of an Innocent Abroad asking, "Is he dead?" or of a heathen idol baptized with the name of a saint, so that what was carved for Jupiter becomes Jew Peter.

More than one canvas passing for a portrait of Columbus is a palimpsest; that is, it shows traces of a former name having been erased in order that the word Columbus might be inscribed.

About thirty years ago, Mr. Barton, a member of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts, seeing in the picture-gallery at Naples a portrait by Parmigiano which was called Columbus, obtained a copy of it painted by an Italian artist named Scardino, and gave it to the society for

VOL. V. N. 8.-18

hanging in its hall. Even in the view of its donor, this painting was only an ideal likeness of Columbus. According to Professor C. E. Norton, of Cambridge, "it is no longer held by any competent critic be an authentic likeness." The disproof of its pretensions by the Spanish investigator and painter Carderera is in substance as follows: "We now come to notice the famous portrait which hangs in the Royal Museo Borbonico at Naples, attributed to the elegant pencil of Purmegianino. As this celebrated painting has of late misled very respectable persons, and has been reproduced in engravings at Naples, as well as in France and England, it seems necessary to subject it to a careful analysis. Bechi, who has described this beautiful work, confesses that the eminent artist had to paint the portrait from imagination. M. Jomard, of the French National Library, is of the same opinion, and yet advised the Genoese nobles commissioned to raise a statue of the great man that their artists should inspire themselves at this notable painting. We must in many points differ from the opinions of the two distinguished persons we have just mentioned. Having carefully examined the portrait in Naples, we have come to doubt whether the Parmesan artist intended it to be a likeness of Columbus at all. There is scarcely any point of resemblance between the authentic [word-?] portraits of the admiral, which so clearly reveal the frank manner, and a certain courtier-like delicacy and reserve which appear in the Neapolitan canvas.

"Still more noticeable is the contrast between the garb and the austere aspect of our hero, and the exquisite and effeminate decorations of a personage whose physiognomy, very long and lean, differs most widely from the oval and stronglymarked face of the admiral,—an aspect noble, clear, and lit up by genius. Neither the hair which adorns the tem

This Neapolitan likeness appeared in Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella." It has just been engraved by George E. Perine expressly for the American Eclectic Magazine. It was an odd blunder to make a misnomer the subject a of so fine an engraving.

ples of the Neapolitan figure with symmetrical and elegant locks, nor the whiskers and long beard, nor the curls smoothly arranged, were seen, save in rarest exceptions, in the age of Ferdinand and Isabella, either in Spain or in Italy or in other civilized regions of Europe; much less up to the first years of Charles V. could any one meet with a slashed German red cap with plume and gold studs. The same may be said concerning other parts of the attire,-as the silk sleeves hooped by fillets, lace about the hands, gloves, a finger-ring, and other refinements which characterize a finished gallant of the sixteenth century. It may be said that the medal which in the Neapolitan portrait adorns the cap bears a ship which is passing beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Admit that it does, may it not be only one of those devices then so much in vogue, and concerning which Giovio, Ruscelli, Capaccio, and other ingenious Italians wrote so many volumes? The vice-king of Catalonia bore as a device the sea-compass; Isabel of Correggio, two anchors in the sea. Stephen Colonna had two columns painted in the deep sea, with a band connecting them, and inscribed, His suffulta. We could cite a hundred examples of picture-restorers destroying accessories and legends, as well as injuriously cleansing and retouching. Who can satisfy us that the Neapolitan portrait has not suffered a similar degradation ?"

On the whole, Carderera decides that Parmigiano's painting had no reference to Columbus, but was more probably a likeness of one Giberto de Sassuolo. It may be added that when Parmigiano had painted a Venus and then received a commission for a Virgin Mary, he passed off his queen of beauty, with some trifling changes, for the queen of saints. Nor were Venus and the Virgin more unlike each other than was his finical courtier to any fair setting forth of Columbus.

Equally untrustworthy has the portrait owned by the Duke of Veragua, a descendant of the great admiral, now been proved. Regarding this work, an

* "Its date

eminent Spanish artist says,' cannot be earlier than the end of the seventeenth century; it has whiskers and ruffles, which were unknown for more than one generation after Columbus. Nothing more than a copy of this modern fancy is to be seen in the Archives of the Indies at Seville, or in the celebrated engraving published by Muños." A copy of the Veragua portrait was presented in 1818 to the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts by R. W. Meade. In the light of subsequent criticism it turns out a less valuable benefaction than was supposed alike by the donor and by the receivers.

No less unsatisfactory is the bust in possession of the New York Historical Society. It is a fac-simile of an ideal in the Protomotica of the Capitoline Museum at Rome.

In view of such "counterfeit presentments" that were counterfeits indeed, and dissatisfied with Peschiera's ideal bust of 1821 in Genoa, the authorities of that city, wishing to erect a worthy monument of its greatest son, sought all through the world for his most authentic likeness, in order to show forth in its chief place of concourse the man himself, and not a mockery of him. The results of this research are worthy our notice.

The Madrid Historical Society advised the Genoese to model their statue, not according to any likeness in Spain, as national pride might have dictated, but by the Florentine painting from which Jefferson's copy was made, as well as according to an ancient wood-cut and an engraving which had been derived from the same source with that painting. What was that source? It was the museum of Paolo Giovio, on the site of Pliny's villa, by the Lake of Como. About the middle of the sixteenth century Cristofano dell' Altissimo was despatched to this museum by the Duke of Tuscany to copy portraits. Vasari relates that that painter completed more than two hundred and eighty, and that they were arranged in the Florentine Museum. They hang there to this day: * Carderera, pp. 8-22.

-Columbus is No. 397.

But whether The Florentine Columbus cannot have been painted later than 1568, when Vasari's notice of it was printed. It may be a score of years older than that date. Though not an original, it is older than any other likeness can be proved, and probably older than any other claims to be.

the face of Columbus was among those painted by Cristofano cannot be proved from Bohn's edition of Vasari, nor by any edition in any language in the Boston Athenæum or Public Library, for I have had them both searched. But all the names are chronicled in the Giunti edition of Vasari, and perhaps in that alone.

Its painter was sent to copy in the Giovian Museum, because there was the best portrait-gallery then in existence. Giovio had long lavished labor and lucre alike in forming it.

Before 1546 the Giovian Museum had become so famous that it drew things of like nature to itself. In that year Giulio Romano bequeathed to it a collection of portraits which Raphael had had made from stanzas in the Vatican.† Among these were Charles VII., King of France, Antonio Colonna, Prince of Salerno, Niccolo Fortebraccio, Francesco Carmignuola, Cardinal Bessarion, Francesco Spinola, and Battista da Canneto. As the place where works of art would be most carefully preserved, best shown, and most appreciated, that repository might well be considered the niche which such treasures were ordained to fill. Accordingly, it is not incredible that if any 'he-art-collector left no legacy to the Giovian reservoir his neglect was judged to be such a proof of insanity as to warrant breaking his will.

Despairing for a while of discovering the Giunti edition of Vasari, which was set down in Brunet's Bibliography as "rare and much sought for" half a century ago, and so of securing the testimony of the only competent and credible contemporary witness known to me regarding the origin of the Florentine Columbus, I was all the more delighted to gain the information I desired from Professor Norton, of Harvard University, who wrote me as follows: "I am glad to say that I happen to have the Giunti edition of Vasari. The list of portraits in the Museo of the Duke Cosimo occupies three pages and part of a fourth. It begins with condottieri, who are followed by kings and emperors; these by emperors of the Turks, and other heroes; these by roic men,' of whom the first eight are1. Alberto Duro; 2. Leonardo da Vinci; 3. Titziano; 4. Michel Angelo Buonarroti; 5. Amerigo Vespucci; 6. Colombo Genovese; 7. Ferdinando Magellane; 8. Ferdinando Cortese." The Florentine Columbus, then, is not an original, though Mr. Jefferson, as was not surprising in his day, had fallen into the mistaken idea that it was. He says, "The Columbus was taken for me from the original which is in the gallery of Florence. I say from an original, because it is well known that in collections of any note, and that of Florence is the first in the world, no copy is ever admitted, and an original existing in Genoa would readily be obtained for a royal collection in Florence. Vasari names this portrait, but does not say by whom it was made."*

The name "Colombo Genovese" has been at last discovered in one other edition of Vasari,the Bologna of 1647. The finder, Judge Daly,

Ticozzi has published eight volumes, and Bottari various notices, proving Giovio's pains to secure authentic contemporary portraits. His letters to Duke Cosimo, to Doni, Aretino, Titian, and others, show solicitude lest some of his portraits were not faithful or worthy of faith. He was twenty-three years old at the death of Columbus. He was one of the foremost to see the greatness of the discoverer. Some of his words concerning him were, "It seems that he is altogether worthy to be honored with a most splendid statue by the Genoese."§

[blocks in formation]

While holding this view, and so careful regarding the accuracy of other likenesses, was he negligent regarding that of Columbus? His museum was situated

in a Spanish province. His agents were abroad in Spain, perhaps so early that if no portrait existed they could have had one painted.

Besides, how unlikely, when other honors were showered upon Columbus, and Giovio counted him worthy of a statue, that no one was found to sketch his features, especially as he survived till Italian painters were common in Spain! One of the portraits painted from life, which were secured by Giovio, was, in the judgment of Crowe and Cavalcaselle, that of Mohammed II., by Gentile Bellini.

Who will believe that Giovio was more anxious to obtain a truthful presentment of a Turk than of a countryman, of the conqueror of an old city than of the discoverer of the New World?

The wood-cut which has been already alluded to was published at Basel in 1578 to illustrate a eulogy on Columbus and other celebrities, written by Giovio. According to its editor, Perna, that wood-cut was derived from a portrait in the Giovian Museum, which had been painted from life. His words are, "I have at much expense employed an eminent artist to engrave the Giovian portraits painted from life," and, so far as appears, no others than those painted from life.

[ocr errors]

The wood-cuts of some other notables in Giovio's book being known to be correct, it is a natural inference that that which represents Columbus is also worthy of credit. It is also asserted by Spanish critics that a family likeness to the Giovian type, as shown in the Florentine copy and in the wood-cut, is clear in most old and famous likenesses, as in the Belvedere at Vienna, the Borghese at Rome, the Altamira, the Malpica, the Villa Franca, etc., in Spain.† The engraving in which Columbus

"Ho mandado dibujar con mucho dispendio á un sobresaliente artista los retratos pintados al vivo, que decoraban el Museo de Giovio." † Carderera, p. 24.

holds an octant in his hand was first published at Cologne by Crispin de Pas. When critically examined, it turns out to be nothing but a free imitation of the Giovian wood-cut which came out in Basel twenty years before.‡

The portraitures I have last passed in review are the more reliable because they show the person of Columbus as we have it described by his own son, as well as by his contemporary Oviedo; that is, "face large and ruddy, cheekbones rather high, nose aquiline, eyes light; hair blonde in youth, but at thirty years already white."§

In the list of Giovian portraits copied by Cristofano, Columbus stands between those of Americus and Magellan. He who disputes the authenticity of Columbus, if consistent, must push his scepticism further, unless the features of Americus and Magellan are confirmed by other evidence. If they are, they heighten the certainty that the Columbian likeness is likewise truthful.

The Swiss wood-cut of 1578 antedates all others, but it is poorly preserved.||

Accordingly, the Roman drawing by Capriolo, published in 1596, and the painting in Florence, were recommended by Spain to the Genoese as the best models in form and feature of the countryman whom they most delighted to honor. Thanks to these and perhaps other archetypes, his native city

[blocks in formation]

A letter from the United States Consul at Genoa states that the sculptors of the statue of Columbus in that city took as their model a drawing, furnished by the Duke of Veragua, from the Cancellieri portrait, which was copied from one found at Cuccaro in the house of a collateral branch of the Columbus family. Now, the Cuccaro likeness was long ago shown by Carderera to have come from the engraving by Capriolo, and this engraving, which dates from 1596, to have been taken from the Florentine portrait or from the Giovian original. It is itself followed, with slight variations, in the portrait which now hangs in the Naval Museum at

« PreviousContinue »