£112 rn^i LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DD0Dfl37flDHb I ■> A*-* * o « •■ .^ ^-"^ ^ ^ O « ' ^^^ .•^ .^ _^>^^ft>^^ 'V^.s^ ;'fSt^^ ^ ..^^ ^^ O V V' „ -^ A > ;^m X c/ ::ii:^ X.^"^ :^se^^ "^^ /" :i^ : \,^' Jl.'SA- v^' "-n^.o^ ^^ \- -y. '^'^m^: c ' / ~\ -A^ or <. " " ° - O , ,0 ^ " ° -in '.%," - • ev 4 o , e/K- V N^ PORTRAITS OP COLUMBUS by JAMES DAVIE BUTLER In Lippincott's Magazine March 1883. 1883.] THE FIDDLER OF BATISCAN. 263 life !" he said. " You never can. The sum of a man's suffering does not equal an hour of the torture that the mind of a woman such as this one can in- flict upon herself. Here is the trou- ble. The right side is fairly crushed. How under heaven did she ever get up here?" Farrington looked at her, winced, and turned away : " Will you call some of the people? I must go out." He went through the hall, oUt into the night. Mrs. West saw him go, and fell back in her chair, quivering. The requirements of her imagination were momentarily satisfied, for she felt that the mystery of the fiddler of Batiscan had culminated in storm and tragedy. Almost a year had passed since the wreck on St. Ignace. Again the St. Lawrence steamer neared the wharf at Batiscan. Dr. and Mrs. West leaned over the side-rail. Beside them stood Farrington and a handsome young woman with a slightly scornful upper lip. Mrs. West had for some time been- talking to this young woman in a rapid undertone. She had timed her remarks so nicely that as the first rope was cast to the shore she concluded, " I suppose, Fileanor, that Ned, and Paul too, would be indignant with me for telling you. But it was all so satisfactorily dreadful, and it is before me so vividly to-night, that I had to talk about it. And I told Paul, from the first, that she was ab- normally depraved." Eleanor had not interrupted or com- mented on her sister's dramatic recital. Now she said clearly, "Ned told me be- fore I married him, all, — all. I said then that my sympathy wuis with her. I say so now. How can you or I re- alize her temptations or estimate her suffering?" Close beside the wharf lay the Bonne Marie, her rigging ablaze with lights, and flags flying from every spar. All Batiscan was on the wharf, for it was known that Monsieur le Capitaine was coming with, his wife en route to St. Ignace. /' Trembling t^Yough the night air came the notes of ayviolin ; louder rose a lusty chorus, — i i " Vi/c la belle ! Vive la belle ! a Ics beaux yeux." Loudest of all, the clang of the gong, and the cry, — " Batiscan ! Batiscan ! Stop half an hour at Batiscan." ^hen the steamer swung off, only Dr. an|3 Mrs. West stood on the deck. .Mrs. West said pensively, "Life has no interest now that Eleanor has a hus- band. She is lovely, but just a little queer. Do you think everything will be all right ?" " The monotony of life, my dear," said West, " would be unendurable if, in your loose phraseology, ' everything ever were all right.' I think, though, that as a match-maker you are unrivalled. I am sure that, out of sympathy for my brother man, I hope you are alone of your kind. I think, too, that Eleanor, with what you call her ' <][ueerness,' — I call it ' intellectual balance,' — is just the woman to love and to hold our Fiddler of Batiscan." Annie Robertson Macparlane. 264 PORTRAITS OF COLUMBUS. [March, Tc^ ec T>.., PORTRAITS OF COLUMBUS. \ ITHEN Jefferson was the American VV minister in Paris, about 1784, he engaged an artist to make the best copy possible of what passed for the most au- thentic Hkeness of Cokimbus in existence, the Medici portrait in Fkirence. This painting was with Jefferson during his Presidency, and he writes about it as one of his chief jewels at Monticello in 1814. In his drawing-room there it hung the second among four portraits on the left as one entered. If Virginia had had any Historical Society in his time,* he would, no doubt, have delighted to en- shrine his pictorial memorial within its walls, deeming it, as he wrote, " a matter even of some public concern that our country should not be without the por- trait of its discoverer." What has become of this Jeffersonian relic ? is a question we naturally ask. I have corresponded regarding it with Mr. Lossing, who has illustrated so many of our worthies, and with Mr. Parton, the latest biographer of Jefferson. Neither of them could give me any inkling of its fate. I next wrote to Miss Sarah N. Randolph, a grand-daughter of Jef- ferson, and author of a volume on his " Domestic Life." In her answer were these words: " The Columbus and other portraits, having been reserved at the sale of Mr. Jeffer- son's effects, were sent to Boston, where it was supposed there would be a better chance of selling them to advantage. They were intrusted to Mr. Coolidge, who married my aunt. They are both now dead, and I wrote to their daughter, telling her of your desire to know about the Columbus. She writes that she knows nothing of it, and would not know that such a picture had been at Monti- cello, but for the fact that it is men- tioned in my book." " I have often," Miss Randolph continued, " wished to * The Virginia Historical Society was not founded until five years after Jefferson's death, or in 1831. trace this picture up, but suppose there is now no hope of doing so. My uncle has been dead only three years, and a single word from him would have told all." The word "Boston" in Miss Ran- .dolph's letter put me on the track. Had I been in that city I would have gone at once to the building (if the Massachu- setts Historical Society. But I was a thousand miles away ; and so I scruti- nized the publications of the society till I came to a notice of a portrait of Colum- bus presented by Israel Thorndike, and I observed that the donor in his letter of presentation (November 26, 1835) de- scribed it as "a copy from an original in the gallery of Medicis \^sic\ at Florence, for Thomas Jefferson." It was a pleas- ure to ascertain that the picture hangs in the hall of that society which has done most to elucidate the annals of the country over which Jefferson presided, and of the continent which Columbus revealed. In 1814 Mr. Delaplaine was publish- ing in Philadelphia his " Repository of Distinguished Americans." He made strenuous efforts to obtain for his fron- tispiece a drawing from the Jeffersonian portrait. Failing in this endeavor, he was forced to have recourse to a paint- ing by Macella, copied from some fancy portrait cased in plate-armor and frilled ruffs, with features as divergent as the costume from the genuine type. The oldest portrait of Columbus of which I have discovered any trace in the United States now hangs in the New York Senate-Chamber at Albany. It was presented to the State in 1784 by Mrs. Maria Farmer, a grand-daughter of Jacob Leisler, Governor of New York in 1689. According to her statement, the painting had already been in her family for a hundred and fifty years. It may, then, have been brought from Europe more than two centuries ago. In one corner it bears the inscription "Anno 1592. Act. 23." This legend 1883.] PORTRAITS OF COLUMBUS. 265 luay indicate the year in which the copy was taken, and the age of the copyist. The so-called likenesses of Columbus are mostly fancy sketches. The great navigator, as represent ed at Madrid in the palace of the Duke of Berwick- Alba, is seated on a tlu-one and arrayed in high-colored silks and embroidery. 'I'his painting is said to be a copy from a mythical likeness in Havana, which has been often sought for, but always in vain. It is the original of the largest known engraving, which bears this in- scription : " The original was painted in America by Van Loo." {El cuadro original fue pintado en America por Van Loo.) When was Van Loo in America? The gods, one would think, must annihilate both time and space to make the owner of such a sham happy. Yet a copy of this engraving was highly prized by the late iMr. Lenox, and now adorns his library in the New York Central Park, lie supposed that the original was painted in the lifetime of Columbus. In the Cuban Consistorial Hall, at Havana, Columbus appears dressed as a familiar of the Inquisition. In one likeness he resembles an effemi- nate Narcissus ; in many others the cos- tume and arrangement of hair are in a style unknown to his century, while his lineaments are treated with no less license than his vestments. Seeing Columbus thus transformed,- — (;>r rather deformed, — we are reminded of personal carica- tures in Punchy and of an Innocent Abroad asking, " Is he dead ?" or of a heathen idol baptized with the name of a saint, so that what was carved for Jupiter becomes Jew Peter. More than one can\'as passing for a portrait of Columbus is a palimpsest ; that is, it shows traces of a former name having been erased in order that the word Columbus might be inscribed. About thirty years ago, Mr. Barton, a member of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts, seeing in the picture-gallery at Naples a portrait by Parmigiano which was called Columbus, obtained a copy of it painted by an Italian artist named Scardino, and gave it to the society for Vol. V.N. S.- 1 8 hanging in its hall. Even in the view of its donor, this painting was only an ideal likeness of Columbus. According to Professor C. E. Norton, of Cambridge, "it is no longer held by any competent critic to be an authentic likeness." The disproof of its pretensions by the Span- ish investigator and painter Carderera is in substance as follows : " We now come to notice the famous portrait which hangs in the lioyal Museo Borhonico at Naples, attributed to the elegant pencil of Parmegianino. As this celebrated painting has of late misled very respect- able persons, and has been reproduced in engravings at Naples, as well as in France and England,* it seems necessary to sub- ject it to a careful analysis. Bechi, who has described this beautiful work, con- fesses that the eminent artist had to paint the portrait from imagination. M. Jomard, of the French National Li- brary, is of the same opinion, and yet advised the Genoese nobles commissioned to raise a statue of the great man that their artists shoidd inspire themselves at this notable painting. We must in many points differ from the opinions of the two distinguished persons we have just mentioned. Having carefully ex- amined the portrait in Naples, we have come to doubt wliether the Parmesan artist intended it to be a likeness of Columbus at all. There is scarcely any point of resemblance between the authen- tic [word-?] portraits of the admiral, which so clearly reveal the frank man- ner, and a certain courtier-like delicacy and reserve which appear in the Nea- politan canvas. " Still more noticeable is the contrast between the garb and the austere aspect of our hero, and the exquisite and effem- inate decorations of a personage whose physiognomy, very long and lean, difi"ers most widely from the oval and strongly- marked face of the admiral, — an aspect noble, clear, and lit up by genius. Neither the hair which adorns the tem- ■••■■" This Neapolitan likeness appeared in Pres- cott's " Ferdinand and Isabella." It has just been engraved by George E. Ferine ex))ressly for the Ain<;r!<'(tn Ec/ectic Mcn/aziiit;. It was an odd blunder to make a misnomer the subject of so fine an engraving. 266 PORTRAITS OF COLUMBUS. [Mabch, pies of the Neapolitan figure with sym- metrical and elegant locks, nor the whis- kers and long beard, nor the curls smoothly arranged, were seen, save in rarest exceptions, in the age of Ferdinand ind Isabella, either in Spain or in Italy or in other civilized regions of Europe ; much less up to the first years of Charles V. could any one meet with a slashed < German red cap with plume and gold .studs. The same may be said concern- ing other parts of the attire, — as the silk sleeves hooped by fillets, lace about the hands, gloves, a finger-ring, and other refinements which characterize a finished gallant of the sixteenth century. Tt may be said that the medal which in the Neapolitan portrait adorns the cap bears a ship which is passing beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Admit that it does, may it not be only one of those devices then so much in vogue, and con- cerning which Giovio, Iluscelli, Capac- cio, and other ingenious Italians wrote so many volumes ? The vice-king of Cata- lonia bore as a device the sea-compass ; Isabel of Correggio, two anchors in the sea. Stephen Colonna had two cohimns painted in the deep s^ea, with a band connecting them, and inscribed. His svffulta. We could cite a hundred examples of picture - restorers destroy- ing accessories and legends, as well as injuriously cleansing and retouching. Who can satisfy us that the Neapolitan portrait has not sufi"ered a similar degra- dation ?" On the whole, Carderera decides that Parmigiano's painting had no reference to Columbus, but was more probably a likeness of one Giberto de Sassuolo. It may be added that when Parmigiano had painted a Venus and then received a commission for a Virgin Mary, he passed off his queen of beauty, with some trifling changes, for tlie queen of saints. Nor were Venus and the Virgin more unlike each other than was his finical courtier to any fair setting forth of Co- lumbus. Equally untrustworthy has the por- trait owned by the Duke of Veragua, a descendant of the great admiral, now been proved. Regarding this work, an eminent Spanish artist says,* " Its date cannot be earlier than the end of the seventeenth century ; it has whiskers and rufiles, which were unknown for more than one generation after Columbus. Nothing more than a copy of this mod- ern fancy is to be seen in the Archives of the Indies at Seville, or in the cele- brated engraving published by Muiios." A copy of the Veragua portrait was pre- sented in 1818 to the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts by R. W. Meade. In the light of subsequent criticism it turn^ out a less valuable benefaction than was. supposed alike by the donor and by the receivers. No less unsatisfactory is the bust in possession of the New York Historical Society. It is a fac-simile of an ideal in the Protomotica of the Capitoline Museum at Rome. In view of such " counterfeit present- ments" that were counterfeits indeed, and dissatisfied with Peschiera's ideal bust of 1821 in (ienoa, the authorities of that city, wishing to erect a worthy monument of its greatest son, sought all through the world for his most au- thentic likeness, in order to show forth in its chief place of concourse the man himself, and not a mockery of him. The results of this research are worthy our notice. The Madrid Historical Society ad- vised the Genoese to model their statue, not according to any likeness in Spain, as national pride might have dictated, but by the Florentine painting from which Jefferson's copy was made, as well as ac- cording to an ancient wood-cut and an engraving which had been derived from the same source with that painting. • What was that source? It was the mu- seum of Paolo Giovio, on the site of Pliny's villa, by the Lake of Como. About the middle of the sixteenth cen- tury Cristofano dell' Altissimo was de- spatched to this museum by the Duke of Tuscany to copy portraits. Vasari re- lates that that painter completed more than two hundred and eighty, and that they were arranged in the Florentine Museum. They hang there to this day : * Carderoia, pp. 8-22. 1883.] PORTRAITS OF COLUMBUS. 267 — Columbus is No. 'J!)?. But whether the lace of" Cokimbus was among those painted by Cristofani) cannot be proved from Bohn's edition of Vasari, nor by any edition in any language in the Bos- ton Athenasum or I'ublic Library, for I have had them both .searched. But all the names are chronicled in the Giunti edition of Vasari, and perhaps in that alone. Despairing for a while of discovering the Giunti edition of Vasari, which was set down in Bruiiet's Bibliography as ■•' rare and much sought for" half a cen- tury ago, and so of securing the testi- mony of the only competent and credible contemporary witness known to me re- garding the origin of the Florentine Columbus, I was all the more delighted to gain the information I desired from Professor Norton, of Harvard Univer- sity, who wrote me as follows : " I am glad to say that 1 happen to have the Giunti edition of Vasari. The list of portraits in the Museo of the Duke Cosimo occupies three pages and part of a fourth. It begins with condot- tieri, who are followed by kings and emperors ; these by emperors of the Turks, and other heroes ; these by ' he- roic men,' of whom the first eight are — 1. Alberto Duro; 2. Leonardo da Vinci; 8. Titziano ; 4. Michel Angelo Buo- narroti ; 5. Amerigo Vespucci ; 6. Co- lombo Genovese ; 7. Ferdinando Ma- gellane ; 8. Ferdinando Cortese." The Florentine Columbus, then, is not an original, — though Wr. Jefferson, as was not surprising in his day, had fallen into the mistaken idea that it was. He says, " The Columbus was taken for me from the original which is in the gallery of Florence. I say from an original, be- cause it is well known that in collections of any note, and that of Florence is the first in the world, no copy is ever ad- mitted, and an original existing in Genoa would readily be obtained for a royal colleotion in Florence. Vasari names this portrait, but does not say by whom it was made."* ® The name "Colombo (jcnovese" has been at last discovered in one other edition of Vasari, — the Bologna of 1647. The tinder, Judge Daly, The Florentine Columbus cannot have been painted later than 1568, when Va- sari's notice of it was printed. It may be a score of years older than that date. Though not an original, it is older than any other likeness can be proved, and probably older than any other claims to be. Its painter was sent to copy in the Giovian IMuseum, because there was the best portrait-gallery then in existence. Giovio had long lavished labor and lucre alike in forming it. Before 1546 tiio Giovian Museum had become so famous that it drew things of like nature to itself. In that year Giulio Romano bequeathed to it a collection of portraits which Raphael had had made from stanzas in the Vatican.! Among these were Charles VII., King of France, Antonio Colonna, Prince of Salerno, Niccolo Fortebraccio, Francesco Carmignuola, Cardinal Bessarion, Fran- cesco Spinola, and Battista da Canneto. As the place where works of art would be most carefully preserved, best shown, and most appreciated, that repository might well be considered the niche which such treasures were ordained to fill. Ac- cordingly, it is nor incredible that if any art-collector left no legacy to the Giovian reservoir his neglect was judged to be such a proof of insanity as to warrant breaking his will. Ticozzi has published eight volumes, and Bottari various notices, proving Gi- ovio's pains to siicure authentic contem- porary portraits. His letters to Duke Cosimo, to Doni. Aretino, Titian, and others, show solicitude lest some of his portraits were not faithful or worthy of faith. I He was twenty-three years old at the death of Columbus. He was one of the foremost to see the greatness of the discoverer. Some of his words con- cerning him were, " It seems that he is altogether worthy to be honored with a most splendid statue by the Genoese. "^; describes it as hidden away in a corner, — that is, " in the Appendi.K to vol. iii., signature F. f. f., third sheet back." t Vasari, vol.ii. p. 17. X Carderera, p. 17. ^ "Sicut Columbus dignus videri possit qui a Liguribus luculentissima statua decoretur." In Christoph. Columbi Elogio. 268 PORTRAITS OF COLUMBUS. [March, While holding this view, and so care- ful regarding the accuracy of other like- nesses, was he neo;li":ent re2;ardino; that of Columbus? His museum was situated in a Spanish province. His agents were abroad in Spain, perhaps so early that if no portrait existed they could have had one painted. Besides, how unlikely, when other honors were showered upon Columbus, and Giovio counted him worthy of a statue, that no one was found to sketch his features, especially as he survived till Italian painters were common in Spain ! One of the portraits painted from life, which were secured by Giovio, was, in the judgment of Crowe and Cavalcaselle, that of Mohammed TL, by Gentile Bel- lini. Who will believe that Giovio was more anxious to obtain a truthful pre- sentment of a Turk than of a country- man, — of the conqueror of an old city than of the discoverer of the New World? The wood-cut which has been already alluded to was published at Basel in 1578 to illustrate a eulogy on Columbus and other celebrities, written by Giovio. According to its editor, Perna, that wood-cut was derived from a portrait in the Giovian Museum, which had been painted from life. His words are, '' I have at much expense employed an eminent artist to engrave the Giovian portraits painted from life^'^ and, so far as appears, no others than those painted from life. The wood-cuts of some other nota- bles in Giovio's book being known to be correct, it is a natural inference that that which represents Columbus is also worthy of credit. It is also asserted by Spanish critics that a family likeness to the Giovian type, as shown in the Flor- entine copy and in the wood-cut, is clear in most old and famous likenesses, as in the Belvedere at Vienna, the Bor- ghese at Rome, the AUamira, the Mal- pica, the Villa Franca, etc., in Spain. f The engravino; in which Columbus * " Ho mandado dibujar con mncho dispen- dio a un sobresaliente artista los retratos pinta- dos al vivo, que decoraban el Museo de Giovio." f Carderera, p. 24. holds an octant in his hand was first published at Cologne by Crispin de Pas. When critically examined, it turns out to be nothing but a free imitation of the Giovian wood-cut which came out in Basel twenty years before. J The portraitures I have last passed in review are the more reliable because they show the person of Columbus as we have it described by his own son, as well as by his contemporary Oviedo; that is, " face large and ruddy, cheek- bones rather high, nose aquiline, eyes light ; hair blonde in youth, but at thirty years already white. "§ In the list of Giovian portraits copied by Cristofano, Columbus stands between those of Americus and Magellan. He who disputes the authenticity of Colum- bus, if consistent, must push his scep- ticism further, unless the features of Americus and Magellan are confirmed by other evidence. If they are, they heighten the certainty that the Colum- bian likeness is likewise truthful. The Swiss wood-cut of 1,578 ante- dates all others, but it is poorly pre- served. || Accordingly, the 1 toman drawing by Capriolo, published in 159G, and the painting in Florence, were recommended by Spain to the Genoese as the best models in form and feature of the countryman whom they most delighted to honor. Thanks to these and per- haps other archetypes,^ his native city % Carderera, p. 18. ifi Neither the Florentine portrait nor the Giovian wood-cut, as I think, shows white hair,, though both represent a man more than thirty years old. But in all ages artists have loved tO' depict their subjects as young in hair as in heart. Besides, who knows but Columbus dyed his hair? II Boletin I., 3, 258. ^ A letter from the United States Consul at Genoa states that the sculptors of the statue of Columbus in that city took as their model a drawing, furnished by the Duke of Veragua, from the Cancellieri portrait, which was copied from one found at Cuccaro in the house of a collateral branch of the Columbus family. Now, the Cuccaro likeness was long ago shown by Carderera to have come from the engraving by Capriolo, and this engraving, which dates from 1596, to have been taken from the Florentine portrait or from the Giovian original. It is it- self followed, with slight variations, in the por- trait which now hangs in the Naval Museum at 18S3.] PORTRAITS OF COLUMBUS. 269 in 1862 completed a monument to Co- lumbus which puts to shame our ridic- ulous figure by the Neapolitan Persico perched on the Capitol stops at Washing- ton in 1844, where he who gave us our continent is clad in a sort of mail not invented at his era, and, standing with tlie globe poised in his hand like a nine- pin ball, seems ready to bowl it through an alley. Though so many jiortraits of Colum- bus point to that in (liovio's Museum as their origin, and bear a family likeness in scale, attitude, and material, and the eyes in all look to the right, they differ in accessories, especiully in the costume and the hair, as well as in the expression, which ranges from sad to cheerful. The wood-cut and the Florentine copy are so divergent in dross, though the features are alike, that recent critics hold that Giovio had two likenesses. The costume in the wood-cut corresponds to what the curate of Palacios saw Columbus wearing in June, 1496, — namely, " a dress in c-ijlor and fashion like a Franciscan friar's, but shorter, and for devotion girt with the rope of a Cordelier."* The costume in the Gio- vian portrait strikes in face, his form, his habit as he lived, still triumph over death. James Davie Butler. X Los Restos de Colon. Madrid, 1879. ^/ '•' 521 ^U(, >'-*-»•• ■' v- 5*^^ :^l^e^: ^o^^ <^ % <^ ^>^%;^ % ^ ^^i- ^^^% ^'^^S /'^ I. 'J' V <■ , ■ ' - ^ ^^ \3 - . C* c .-f ^°-V-. V . '■\:Z'^ c ,v <^. 0- ."'^:,>. '^^ .0^ A c o C' o > -0^ ■•h 4^ < -v •^ '<^ ^?<^' _ , '^'s ^^--^ A .^' '%o ^^-n^. 5- ^ >'^ ,v < ''^^,. fc: '•"' (^"i o <^: .0 r^c^t-. v:.'/ ^^ ^im, ■r<^ .'.V' ■^ -7- 'V "^ N MANCHESTER ■^' INDIANA