University of Virginia Library

THE LORENZO LOTTO PORTRAIT

Another fine painting of Columbus is owned by an American collector—the Lorenzo Lotto portrait, which was exhibited at the Columbian Exposition in 1893, and which is now the property of Mr. James Ellsworth, of New York. An engraving of it appears on page 52.

It is noteworthy, not to say curious, that so many of the older portraits of Columbus should be identified as the work of Venetian painters whose early life was contemporary with the navigator's last years. Lotto was born in or about 1480, and this work is dated 1512—six years after the death of Columbus.

It has a record of ownership by the steward of Margaret of Parma—illegitimate daughter of Charles V, and already mentioned in the quotation from Washington Irving—and subsequently by several titled European families. As a likeness, in spite of a certain touch of weakness in the pictured face, it may be classed with the Sebastiano del Piombo portrait, and with that in the Ministry of Marine at Madrid, to be noticed shortly. It tallies fairly well with the descriptions of Columbus, and with the most generally approved idea of his appearance.

Most modern historical painters who have had occasion to depict Columbus

seem to have accepted this type of face. A notable instance is to be found in Vaczlav Brozik's celebrated picture of the navigator soliciting the aid of Queen Isabella— one of the countless picturesque incidents with which fiction has embellished history. John Vanderlyn, however, in his well-known "Landing of Columbus," painted for the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington, seems to have followed the Jomard or possibly the Parmigiano portrait, for he has given his hero a longish beard.