The Discovery of the Americas

A Portrait of Christopher Columbus

This is Sebastiano Del Piombo’s portrait of Christopher Columbus which was painted in 1519. It now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

However, art historians are not certain that it was drawn by Sebastiano Del Piombo or that it is of Christopher Columbus. The text across the painting reads “”the Ligurian Colombo, the first to enter by ship into the world of the Antipodes 1519”. We don’t generally term the Americas as the Antipodes and Columbus died in 1506.