Christopher Columbus and sons Diego and Ferdinand / Wilson sculpt.

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Columbus appears here with both of his sons, Diego and Ferdinand, rather than alone as in most portraits of the navigator. This London engraving was published by I. Stockdale on December 13, 1794, from a sculpture credited to Wilson, at a time when British readers were absorbing a steady stream of histories of the Americas and the men who opened them. Diego died in 1526, and Ferdinand, who lived from 1488 to 1539, later wrote a biography of his father, so the sheet presents the family as much as the explorer. It is worth noticing how the engraver turns a carved likeness into line, a common way of bringing sculpted portraits of long-dead figures before a wider public.

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