What Did Christopher Columbus Look Like?

Question: What did Christopher Columbus look like?

Answer: Considering how famous or infamous (depending on who you ask) Christopher Columbus is, there is still plenty we don’t know about him.

Much of his childhood and certain parts of his life are not very well-known. There are also many famous portraits of Christopher Columbus, but none of them is totally accurate. The truth is we don’t known what the explorer Columbus really looked like. No portraits definitively made in his lifetime survived, and perhaps none were made. The best written description we have of him comes from his son, Fernando. Fernando describes his father as “a vigorous man, of tall stature, with blond beard and hair, clear complexion and blue eyes.” Interestingly this description is totally unlike other depictions of him.

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The most iconic image of Columbus is a portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo, which has been reproduced in many textbooks. It agrees with descriptions of Columbus in that it shows a large man with auburn hair, but the painting dates from 1519 and cannot, therefore, have been painted from life.

So, no, there are no known authentic portraits of Columbus and we cannot be certain what the explorer looked like.

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Source:

Scientific American