236 



COLUMBIAN HISTORICAL EXPOSITION AT MADRID. 



born in 1519, and died in 1581. Wornum regards him as &quot;in every respect the best 

 portrait painter of his time/ and says that he represented in perfection the school of 

 Flemish art at the time of Riibens and Rembrandt. Waagen, also an acknowledged 

 authority, places him in the first rank among the masters of his epoch. He visited 

 Madrid in 1552, at the request of Charles V, to paint the portraits of the royal family. 

 The Madrid gallery contains some excellent examples from his brush, especially that 

 of Queen Mary of England. He remained there until the time of Philip II, when 

 for some slight offense, said to have been heretical utterances, he was denounced 

 to the Inquisition. He escaped from Spain, however, and spent the rest of his life 

 in Flanders. This portrait was painted about 1570, from a miniature of Columbus 

 said to have been in the possession of the royal family at Madrid, at the order 

 of Margaret of Parma, regent of the Netherlands under Philip II. Margaret was 

 the natural daughter of Charles V of Spain and Margaret von Gest, a lady of his 

 court, and was in turn the wife of Alessandro di Medici, Duke of Florence, and 

 Octavio Farnese, Duke of Parma. She was the mother of Alessandro Farnese, the 



famous cardinal, for whom the 

 Parmigiano portrait of Columbus, 

 now at Naples, was painted. The 

 Moro portrait was removed to Spain 

 when the Spanish court abandoned 

 the Netherlands, and it is said to 

 have hung in the cabin of one of the 

 vessels of the Spanish Armada 

 during the famous sea fight of 1588. 

 The vessel which carried it Avent to 

 pieces on the Cornish coast of Eng 

 land, and the owner of the adj oining 

 estate kept the picture as his share 

 of the wreckage. From that date 

 to the middle of the present century 

 it remained in the possession of the 

 same family, when it was purchased 

 by William Cribb, of Covent Gar 

 den, London. His descendants sold 

 it to Mr. Charles F. Gunther, of Chi 

 cago. The portrait was engraved 

 in 1850, and was used by Irving to 



illustrate his Life of Columbus. It is painted upon a panel of wood, about 3 feet by 2 

 in size, and bears in faint letters the inscription &quot;Ch. Colombo.&quot; The frame in which 

 it is inclosed is a marvelous piece of carving and appears to be as old as the painting. 



No. 52. THE CLADEJJA PORTRAIT (page 232). 



In the building known as the Lonja, at Seville, which was formerly the royal 

 exchange, are kept the archives of the council of the Indies a committee of 

 churchmen and politicians, who had charge of the spiritual and temporal welfare of 

 the New World for two centuries. Hanging over the principal entrance is a por 

 trait of Columbus, representing him in ruff and armor, with a full young face, like a 

 courtier of 30 years, and a mustache and imperial. This portrait was used as the 

 model for the tablet that conceals the burial place of the alleged remains of Colum 

 bus in Havana. It was also used by Don Cristobal Cladera as a frontispiece to his 

 Historical Investigations concerning the DiscoA^eries of the Spaniards on the Ocean 

 in the Fifteenth and the Principal Part of the Sixteenth Centuries, published at 

 Madrid, in 1794. The signature of the engraving is &quot; Bart Vasque la Grabo, 1791.&quot; 

 The picture has been copied many times; but it is supposed to be an original of 

 Luis Columbus, or some other member of the family, instead of the discoverer. 



COLUMBUS AND HIS SONS. 

 See page 237. 



