University of Virginia Library

THE MONTANUS ENGRAVING

The Montanus engraving, printed on page 54, is said to have been taken from painting executed by a German artist at Nuremberg, in 1661. Its chief interest lies in its almost complete dissimilarity to all the rest of the series, and it is presented here chiefly as an illustration of the extraordinary diversity of the portraits of Columbus. One can scarcely believe that the strenuous and daring explorer who discovered America could possibly have had the heavy, expressionless features given him by this Teutonic painter.

Equally unsatisfactory is the weak and almost effeminate Columbus that looks cut at us from the portrait shown on this page. This is a reproduction of a canvas that hangs in the large but not very interesting collection of paintings in the National Museum of Naples. It is a work of Francesco Maria Mazzola, better known as Parmigiano, who was only three years old when the navigator died, and it seems safe to set it down as being purely a work of fancy.

Parmigiano is known to have been none too conscientious an artist. For instance, he was imprisoned at Bologna in 1537 for accepting payment for a series of frescoes and then failing to execute them.

Whatever may have been the actual physical semblance of the discoverer of America, we have a right to expect to see in all portraits of him something of that strength of character which made him travel so insistently from country to country seeking assistance in his great undertaking, and something of that dignified and noble bearing which enabled him to withstand the derision of the wise men of his time, the wrath of the elements, and the mutiny of his companions.

Columbus has been too often considered as one who went out to find the Indies and stumbled accidentally upon an unknown world. This is not a fair statement of his achievement. He went out to seek "the islands of Antipodia," and he "sailed on" until he found the thing he sought. Only in those portraits which give him a strong and noble cast of countenance can we find a satisfying likeness of this remarkable man.