Is that really you,Chris?
Sebastiano del Piombo
Venice,1485/86-1547,Rome,
Portrait of a Man,Said to be Christopher Columbus,1519,
medium-oil on canvas
Painted in Rome by one of the outstanding Venetian masters of the High Renaissance,this badly damaged portrait purports to show Christopher Columbus.The inscription as the Ligurian Colombo "the first to enter by ship into the world of the Antipodes 1519,"but the writing is not entirely trustworthy and the date1 1519 means that it cannot be painted from life as Columbus died in 1506.There are other,quite different portraits,that also claim to show Columbus.Nonetheless from an early date our picture became the authoritative (the museum's i.e.) likeness.In 1814 the painting was part of the collection of Prince Talleyrand and was exhibited at the Palais Royal in Paris.
Is that really you,Chris?
Sebastiano del Piombo
Venice,1485/86-1547,Rome,
Portrait of a Man,Said to be Christopher Columbus,1519,
medium-oil on canvas
Painted in Rome by one of the outstanding Venetian masters of the High Renaissance,this badly damaged portrait purports to show Christopher Columbus.The inscription as the Ligurian Colombo "the first to enter by ship into the world of the Antipodes 1519,"but the writing is not entirely trustworthy and the date1 1519 means that it cannot be painted from life as Columbus died in 1506.There are other,quite different portraits,that also claim to show Columbus.Nonetheless from an early date our picture became the authoritative (the museum's i.e.) likeness.In 1814 the painting was part of the collection of Prince Talleyrand and was exhibited at the Palais Royal in Paris.