Follower of Francesco Hayez (Italian, 1791-1882), "Christopher Columbus with His Son Ferdinand", probably mid-19th c., oil on canvas, unsigned, 56 1/2 in. x 45 1/2 in., original gilt frame with foliate corner elements.
Note: This large picture is in the fully historicizing mode of European Romanticism, of which Hayez was Italy's greatest exponent. After studying in a variety of schools and academies in his native Venice, Hayez won a scholarship to Rome-where he became a disciple of the great sculptor Antonio Canova, and a friend of both the French painter Ingres (whom he bested in a competition of 1815) and especially the German artists called the Nazarenes. From Rome he returned to the Veneto, and worked to increasing acclaim; he sent a picture of 1818-20 to Milan, where it and a canvas of 1821 were hailed as touchstones of the new Romantic painting; Stendahl declared him to be the greatest painter of his day. Moving to Milan in 1823, Hayez taught for decades at the Brera Academy, producing highly Romantic paintings with strong overtones of contemporary affairs, and becoming a friend of Giuseppe Verdi. In his time he was equally admired for his large-scale historicizing works, and for his fine portraits; the present exceptional canvas, strongly in his manner, combines both of these modes.
If the present interpretation of the subject is valid (and it remains only a plausible hypothesis), we see the "Admiral of the Ocean Seas" in the Gothic hall of a castle in Spain during 1502, with his thirteen-year-old son Ferdinand presumably pleading to be allowed to accompany his father-as he did-on the latter's fourth voyage to the New World. The Admiral's pensive mood is to be imagined as stemming from the document seen on Ferdinand's knees, which probably laid out the charges of injustice with which Columbus was arraigned in Hispaniola in 1500 (his ignominious passage in irons, back to Spain, was commuted to a royal welcome by the time of his arrival; but the dishonor still rankled). He is shown in the court finery which he habitually wore, and his son-by then a page of Queen Isabella-is even more richly attired; the Admiral wears a suspiciously 19th-century-looking cap, and his large belt-buckle is decorated with a horseman trampling an adversary (unfortunately symbolizing the very excesses for which he had been indicted). Columbus and his son, who in the 1530s wrote the definitive account of his father's accomplishments, sailed together in the final voyage on 9 May 1502: they returned to Spain on 7 November 1504; and on 20 May 1506 Columbus, whose health had broken, died at Valladolid.
References: Fernando Mazzocca, "Hayez," Grove Dictionary of Art, Jane Turner, ed., 34 vols., London, 1996, vol. 14, pp. 264-267; C. R. Beazley, "Columbus," Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., 29 vols., Cambridge, 1910, vol. 6, pp. 741-746.