These are but a few of the many pictures that have been made to pass, 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 Museo Borbonico, 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 manuscript titles 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.
[Illustration: 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 pass 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 entitled him to such a recognition as a public benefactor as the bank was accustomed to bestow. The main hall of the palace of this institution 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 constitutes 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.