Memorials of Columbus Author:Christopher Columbus Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: t shall see presently; nor would any critic allow that a portrait, executed by a person who had never seen the original, had preserved more faithfully the fea... more »tures of the countenance, than a description written by the son and the companion of Columbus. Sometimes, said Count Perticari to the able artist Agricola, words paint better than the lines of designers; and on that true principle he wished the artist in question, not to confine himself to a mere copy of Orcagna's portrait of Dante, but to study attentively the description of the poet's features, which has been handed down to us by his commentator, Benvenuto da Imola. No one can flatter himself that Spain can produce a true portrait of Columbus. The learned Baron Vernazza remarks, that it is not known, "that before 1506, there was any painter or sculptor living in Spain, excepting Antonio de Rincon, a Castilian; who, according to Palamino, painted portraits of Ferdinand and Isabella for a church at Toledo, which are not mentioned by Conca. It is not said that he painted a portrait of Columbus." We have no wish to conceal that Theodore de Bry pretended that he possessed a portrait of the hero, the same that was to be seen in an apartment of the council of the Indies; from which place having been stolen, and carried to the Netherlands for sale, it came finally into the hands of De Bry, who gave an engraving of it in his America. This print has been copied in the Eulogium of Columbus, by the Marquis Durazzo, printed by Bodo- ni, and in the Life by Bossi, published at Milan. There are numerous reasons for impugning the authenticity of De Bry's portrait. A man who feels no remorse at stealing, and is not even ashamed to avow himself a thief, will be ready enough to tell a lie for the purpose of extorting a few ducats from a ...« less