Looks are deceiving: The portraits of Christopher Columbus

Since no portraits of the famed discoverer, Christopher Columbus, were made during his lifetime, an analysis of the images used to describe the physical attributes of the man and his place in history is an exercise in cultural relativism. Three time periods were studied: soon after his death when the public simply needed to know what the explorer looked like, hundreds of years after his explorations when commercial interests used Columbus as a symbol for their own further expansion into unknown territories, and during the present day when a majority of opinion about Columbus and his exploits is severely critical.