Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 6

[Sidenote: Varied estimates of Columbus.]

In concluding this summary of the commentaries upon the life of Columbus, the thought comes back that his career has been singularly subject to the gauging of opinionated chroniclers. The figure of the man, as he lives to-day in the mind of the general reader, in whatever country, comports in the main with the characterizations of Irving, De Lorgues, or Goodrich. These last two have entered upon their works with a determined purpose, the Frenchman of making a saint, and the American a scamp, of the great discoverer of America. They each, in their twists, pervert and emphasize every trait and every incident to favor their views. Their narratives are each without any background of that mixture of incongruity, inconsistency, and fatality from which no human being is wholly free. Their books are absolutely worthless as historical records.

That of Goodrich has probably done little to make proselytes. That of De Lorgues has infected a large body of tributary devotees of the Catholic Church.

The work of Irving is much above any such level; but it has done more harm because its charms are insidious. He recognized at least that human life is composite; but he had as much of a predetermination as they, and his purpose was to create a hero. He glorified what was heroic, palliated what was unheroic, and minimized the doubtful aspects of Columbus's character. His book is, therefore, dangerously seductive to the popular sense. The genuine Columbus evaporates under the warmth of the writer's genius, and we have nothing left but a refinement of his clay. The _Life of Columbus_ was a sudden product of success, and it has kept its hold on the public very constantly; but it has lost ground in these later years among scholarly inquirers. They have, by their collation of its narrative with the original sources, discovered its flaccid character. They have outgrown the witcheries of its graceful style. They have learned to put at their value the repet.i.tionary changes of stock sentiment, which swell the body of the text, sometimes, provokingly.

[Sidenote: Portraits of Columbus.]

[Sidenote: Columbus's person.]

Out of the variety of testimony respecting the person of the adult Columbus, it is not easy to draw a picture that his contemporaries would surely recognize. Likeness we have none that can be proved beyond a question the result of any sitting, or even of any acquaintance. If we were called upon to picture him as he stood on San Salvador, we might figure a man of impressive stature with lofty, not to say austere, bearing, his face longer by something more than its breadth, his cheek bones high, his nose aquiline, his eyes a light gray, his complexion fair with freckles spotting a ruddy glow, his hair once light, but then turned to gray. His favorite garb seems to have been the frock of a Franciscan monk. Such a figure would not conflict with the descriptions which those who knew him, and those who had questioned his a.s.sociates, have transmitted to us, as we read them in the pages ascribed to Ferdinand, his son; in those of the Spanish historian, Oviedo; of the priest Las Casas; and in the later recitals of Gomara and Benzoni, and of the official chronicler of the Spanish Indies, Antonio Herrera. The oldest description of all is one made in 1501, in the unauthorized version of the first decade of Peter Martyr, emanating, very likely, from the translator Trivigiano, who had then recently come in contact with Columbus.

[Sidenote: La Cosa's St. Christopher.]

Turning from these descriptions to the pictures that have been put forth as likenesses, we find not a little difficulty in reconciling the two.

There is nothing that unmistakably goes back to the lifetime of Columbus except the figure of St. Christopher, which makes a vignette in colors on the mappemonde, which was drawn in 1500, by one of Columbus's pilots, Juan de la Cosa, and is now preserved in Madrid. It has been fondly claimed that Cosa transferred the features of his master to the lineaments of the saint; but the a.s.sertion is wholly without proof.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. CHRISTOPHER.

[The vignette of La Cosa's map.]]

[Sidenote: Jovius's gallery.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOVIUS'S COLUMBUS, THE EARLIEST ENGRAVED LIKENESS.]

Paolo Giovio, or, as better known in the Latin form, Paulus Jovius, was old enough in 1492 to have, in later life, remembered the thrill of expectation which ran for the moment through parts of Europe, when the letter of Columbus describing his voyage was published in Italy, where Jovius was then a schoolboy. He was but an infant, or perhaps not born when Columbus left Italy. So the interest of Jovius in the Discoverer could hardly have arisen from any other a.s.sociations than those easily suggestive to one who, like Jovius, was a student of his own times.

Columbus had been dead ten years when Jovius, as a historian, attracted the notice of Pope Leo X., and entered upon such a career of prosperity that he could build a villa on Lake Como, and adorn it with a gallery of portraits of those who had made his age famous. That he included a likeness of Columbus among his heroes there seems to be no doubt.

Whether the likeness was painted from life, and by whom, or modeled after an ideal, more or less accordant with the reports of those who may have known the Genoese, is entirely beyond our knowledge. As a historian Jovius professed the right to distort the truth for any purpose that suited him, and his conceptions of the truth of portraiture may quite as well have been equally loose. Just a year before his own death, Jovius gave a sketch of Columbus's career in his _Elogia Virorum Ill.u.s.trium_, published at Florence in 1551; but it was not till twenty-four years later, in 1575, that a new edition of the book gave wood-cuts of the portraits in the gallery of the Como villa, to ill.u.s.trate the sketches, and that of Columbus appeared among them. This engraving, then, is the oldest likeness of Columbus presenting any claims to consideration. It found place also, within a year or two, in what purported to be a collection of portraits from the Jovian gallery; and the engraver of them was Tobias Stimmer, a Swiss designer, who stands in the biographical dictionaries of artists as born in 1534, and of course could not have a.s.sisted his skill by any knowledge of Columbus, on his own part. This picture, to which a large part of the very various likenesses called those of Columbus can be traced, is done in the bold, easy handling common in the wood-cuts of that day, and with a precision of skill that might well make one believe that it preserves a das.h.i.+ng verisimilitude to the original picture. It represents a full-face, shaven, curly-haired man, with a thoughtful and somewhat sad countenance, his hands gathering about the waist a priest's robe, of which the hood has fallen about his neck. If there is any picture to be judged authentic, this is best ent.i.tled to that estimation.

[Sidenote: The Florence picture.]

Connection with the Como gallery is held to be so significant of the authenticity of any portrait of Columbus that it is claimed for two other pictures, which are near enough alike to have followed the same prototype, and which are not, except in garb, very unlike the Jovian wood-cut. As copies of the Como original in features, they may easily have varied in apparel. One of these is a picture preserved in the gallery at Florence,--a well-moulded, intellectual head, full-faced, above a closely b.u.t.toned tunic, or frock, seen within drapery that falls off the shoulders. It is not claimed to be the Como portrait, but it may have been painted from it, perhaps by Christofano dell' Altissimo, some time before 1568. A copy of it was made for Thomas Jefferson, which, having hung for a while at Monticello, came at last to Boston, and pa.s.sed into the gallery of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FLORENCE COLUMBUS.]

[Sidenote: The Yanez picture.]

The picture resembling this, and which may have had equal claims of a.s.sociation with the Jovian gallery, is one now preserved in Madrid, and the oldest canvas representing Columbus that is known in Spain. It takes the name of the Yanez portrait from that of the owner of it, from whom it was bought in Granada, in 1763. Representing, when brought to notice, a garment trimmed with fur, there has been disclosed upon it, and underlying this later paint, an original, close-fitting tunic, much like the Florence picture; while a further removal of the superposed pigment has revealed an inscription, supposed to authenticate it as Columbus, the discoverer of the New World. It is said that the Duke of Veragua holds it to be the most authentic likeness of his ancestor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE YANEZ COLUMBUS.]

[Sidenote: De Bry's picture.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLUMBUS.

[A reproduction of the so-called Capriolo cut given in Giuseppe Banchero's _La Tavola di Bronzo_, (Genoa, 1857), and based on the Jovian type.]]

Another conspicuous portrait is that given by De Bry in the larger series of his Collection of Early Voyages. De Bry claims that it was painted by order of King Ferdinand, and that it was purloined from the offices of the Council of the Indies in Spain, and brought to the Netherlands, and in this way fell into the hands of that engraver and editor. It bears little resemblance to the pictures already mentioned; nor does it appear to conform to the descriptions of Columbus's person.

It has a more rugged and shorter face, with a profusion of closely waved hair falling beneath an ugly, angular cap. De Bry engraved it, or rather published it, in 1595, twenty years after the Jovian wood-cut appeared, and we know of no engraving intervening. No one of the generation that was old enough to have known the navigator could then have survived, and the picture has no other voucher than the professions of the engraver of it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DE BRY'S COLUMBUS.]

[Sidenote: Other portraits.]

[Sidenote: Havana monument.]

[Sidenote: Peschiera's bust.]

These are but a few of the many pictures that have been made to pa.s.s, first and last, for Columbus, and the only ones meriting serious study for their claims. The American public was long taught to regard the effigy of Columbus as that of a bedizened courtier, because Prescott selected for an engraving to adorn his _Ferdinand and Isabella_ a picture of such a person, which is ascribed to Parmigiano, and is preserved in the Mus...o...b..rbonico, at Naples. Its claims long ago ceased to be considered. The traveler in Cuba sees in the Cathedral at Havana a monumental effigy, of which there is no evidence of authenticity worthy of consideration. The traveler in Italy can see in Genoa, placed on the cabinet which was made to hold the ma.n.u.script t.i.tles of Columbus, a bust by Peschiera. It has the negative merit of having no relation to any of the alleged portraits; but represents the sculptor's conception of the man, guided by the scant descriptions of him given to us by his contemporaries.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BUST OF COLUMBUS ON THE TOMB AT HAVANA.]

If the reader desires to see how extensive the field of research is, for one who can spend the time in tracing all the clues connected with all the representations which pa.s.s for Columbus, he can make a beginning, at least, under the guidance of the essay on the portraits which the present writer contributed to the _Narrative and Critical History of America_, vol. ii.

When Columbus, in 1502, ordered a tenth of his income to be paid annually to the Bank of St. George, in Genoa, for the purpose of reducing the tax upon corn, wine, and other provisions, the generous act, if it had been carried out, would have ent.i.tled him to such a recognition as a public benefactor as the bank was accustomed to bestow.

The main hall of the palace of this inst.i.tution commemorates such patriotic efforts by showing a sitting statue for the largest benefactors; a standing figure for lesser gifts, while still lower gradations of charitable help are indicated in busts, or in mere inscriptions on a mural tablet. It has been thought that posterity, curious to see the great Admiral as his contemporaries saw him, suffers with the state of Genoa, in not having such an effigy, by the neglect or inattention which followed upon the announced purpose of Columbus. We certainly find there to-day no such visible proof of his munificence or aspect. Harrisse, while referring to this deprivation, takes occasion, in his _Bank of St. George_ (p. 108), to say that he does not "believe that the portrait of Columbus was ever drawn, carved, or painted from the life." He contends that portrait-painting was not common in Spain, in Columbus's day, and that we have no trace of the painters, whose work const.i.tutes the beginning of the art, in any record, or authentic effigy, to show that the person of the Admiral was ever made the subject of the art. The same writer indicates that the interval during which Columbus was popular enough to be painted extended over only six weeks in April and May, 1493. He finds that much greater heroes, as the world then determined, like Boabdil and Cordova, were not thus honored, and holds that the portraits of Ferdinand and Isabella, which editions of Prescott have made familiar, are really fancy pictures of the close of the sixteenth century.

CHAPTER III.

THE ANCESTRY AND HOME OF COLUMBUS.

[Sidenote: The name Colombo.]

No one has mastered so thoroughly as Harrisse the intricacies of the Columbus genealogy. A pride in the name of Colombo has been shared by all who have borne it or have had relations.h.i.+p with it, and there has been a not unworthy compet.i.tion among many branches of the common stock to establish the evidences of their descent in connection, more or less intimate, with the greatest name that has signalized the family history.

This reduplication of families, as well as the constant recurrence of the same fore-names, particularly common in Italian families, has rendered it difficult to construct the genealogical tree of the Admiral, and has given ground for drafts of his pedigree, acceptable to some, and disputed by other claimants of kins.h.i.+p.

[Sidenote: The French Colombos.]

There was a Gascon-French subject of Louis XI., Guillaume de Casanove, sometimes called Coulomp, Coullon, Colon, in the Italian accounts Colombo, and Latinized as Columbus, who is said to have commanded a fleet of seven sail, which, in October, 1474, captured two galleys belonging to Ferdinand, king of Sicily. When Leibnitz published, for the first time, some of the diplomatic correspondence which ensued, he interjected the fore-name Christophorus in the references to the Columbus of this narrative. This was in his _Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus_, published at Hannover in 1693. Leibnitz was soon undeceived by Nicolas Thoynard, who explained that the corsair in question was Guillaume de Casanove, vice-admiral of France, and Leibnitz disavowed the imputation upon the Genoese navigator in a subsequent volume. Though there is some difference of opinion respecting the ident.i.ty of Casanove and the capturer of the galleys, there can no longer be any doubt, in the light of pertinent investigations, that the French Colombos were of no immediate kin to the family of Genoa and Savona, as is abundantly set forth by Harrisse in his _Les Colombo de France et d'Italie_ (Paris, 1874). Since the French Coullon, or Coulomp, was sometimes in the waters neighboring to Genoa, it is not unlikely that some confusion may arise in separating the Italian from the French Colombos; and it has been pointed out that a certain entry of wreckage in the registry of Genoa, which Spotorno a.s.sociates with Christopher Columbus, may more probably be connected with this Gascon navigator.

Bossi, the earliest biographer in recent times, considers that a Colombo named in a letter to the Duke of Milan as being in a naval fight off Cyprus, between Genoese and Venetian vessels, in 1476, was the discoverer of the New World. Harrisse, in his _Les Colombo_, has printed this letter, and from it it does not appear that the commander of the Genoese fleet is known by name, and that the only mention of a Colombo is that a fleet commanded by one of that name was somewhere encountered.

There is no indication, however, that this commander was Christopher Columbus. The presumption is that he was the roving Casanove.

Leibnitz was doubtless misled by the a.s.sertion of the _Historie_ of 1571, which allows that Christopher Columbus had sailed under the orders of an admiral of his name and family, and, particularly, was in that naval combat off Lisbon, when, his vessel getting on fire, he swam with the aid of an oar to the Portuguese sh.o.r.e. The doubtful character of this episode will be considered later; but it is more to the purpose here that this same book, in citing a letter, of which we are supposed to have the complete text as preserved by Columbus himself, makes Columbus say that he was not the only admiral which his family had produced. This is a clear reference, it is supposed, to this vice-admiral of France. It is enough to say that the genuine text of this letter to the nurse of Don Juan does not contain this controverted pa.s.sage, and the defenders of the truth of the _Historie_, like D'Avezac, are forced to imagine there must have been another letter, not now known.

[Sidenote: The younger French admiral.]

Beside the elder admiral of France, the name of Colombo Junior belonged to another of these French sea-rovers in the fifteenth century, who has been held to be a nephew, or at least a relative, of the elder. He has also sometimes been confounded with the Genoese Columbus.

[Sidenote: Genealogy.]

[Sidenote: Pretenders.]