In A Nutshell
While there are many different portraits available of Christopher Columbus, all of them are simply the artist’s take on what they thought he looked like. Columbus, as far as history can tell us, never actually sat for a portrait. Some people speculate that one might have been requested by Queen Isabella during his time at her court, but no such portrait was ever found in her collection upon her death.
The Whole Bushel
Columbus is someone most people have some visual image of in their heads and for good reason. There are over 70 portraits of Columbus that have at one point been claimed as authentic by some artist or another. Chicago put 71 of them on display at once for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, and the jury that went through them could not find good evidence that a single one was the real thing. Many different people have tried to capture his likeness, but considering no historical records of any kind show evidence that he sat for a portrait, none are considered legitimate. Some people point out that with his fame, it seems unlikely that it never would have happened, but there are several reasons why Columbus might never have gotten around to it.
For starters, Columbus originally came from Genoa, Italy and the people there were unlikely to bother with that sort of thing at the time. In fact, in Genoa during those days art of that manner was usually used in churches and not really much of anywhere else. Some speculate that Columbus simply never would have thought of it. However, it is also important to note that while Columbus’s discovery was considered extremely important in later years, at the time he was basically a big, fat letdown. He was expected to bring back incredible riches and made many promises, but the royal court never really felt that he accomplished what he set out to do. It could be that he never had a portrait commissioned simply because he fell out of favor. Isabella did keep painters around her court, including her court painter Francisco Chacon, so the chance was there. When she died in 1504, all 460 paintings she owned were sold off to help pay for a royal chapel in Granada.
The picture in your head is probably the Sebastiano del Piombo painting that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Met is careful about it. The museum calls the painting Portrait of a Man, Said to be Christopher Columbus, and says plainly that whether it shows Columbus at all is debatable. The date on it is 1519, thirteen years after Columbus died, so nobody was painting from life. The inscription naming him was probably added later, and del Piombo’s biographer, the art historian Michael Hirst, suggested the sitter may be one of the clerics who were at Bologna in the winter of 1529-30. It became the standard likeness anyway, mostly because engravers started copying it around 1590.
People do keep announcing that they have cracked it. In 1991, the art historian Maurizio Marini said a 15th century painting he attributed to Pedro Berruguete, court painter to Ferdinand and Isabella, was the only portrait of Columbus painted during his lifetime. Marini admitted there was no proof Columbus ever sat for it. No portrait of Columbus is recognized as authentic today. In 2024, a documentary on Spanish national television went further and said DNA taken from the tombs in Seville Cathedral pointed to Columbus being a Sephardic Jew from eastern Spain. Other scientists were quick to point out that the forensic expert behind it, José Antonio Lorente, has not put the findings through peer review, and they questioned his methods. Neither one gives us his face.
Now, in the portraits we do have, Columbus is portrayed in just about every manner imaginable. Some portraits have him much thinner or fatter than others; some imagine him with facial hair and all manner of hair colors. His complexion has been shown in many different skin tones as well. In fact, aside from the hooked, aquiline nose that turns up in most of them, it seems the only thing the portraits seem to truly have in common is that he was a European male of some sort. However, history does have some written accounts that give us a clue as to the true visage of Columbus. The fullest one comes from his son Fernando, who sailed with his father as a boy. He set down that Columbus was light-skinned, but sometimes had a ruddy complexion, was neither fat nor thin, stood taller than most men, and had somewhat sharp features with slightly high cheekbones. His eyes were light, blue or hazel depending on the account. His hair was supposed to be blonde, or reddish, but after he turned 30 it changed entirely to white. Bartolomé de las Casas, who knew Columbus after the first voyage, set down much the same description and added a beard. Of course, no matter what face you put on him, he still changed the world.
Show Me The Proof
Looks Are Deceiving: The Portraits of Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus and the Bank of Saint George, by Henry Harrisse
Portrait of a Man, Said to be Columbus
Christopher Columbus: Physical appearance
Portrait may reveal real countenance
Columbus may have been a Spanish Jew
