The Return of Christopher Columbus

The plunder of the so-called New World—gold, weapons, pelts, small statues, and even captive Indigenous people—are presented to the court of Spain in this scene of Christopher Columbus’s return to Castile in 1493 after his first voyage to the Caribbean. The painting represents a celebratory view of Columbus as triumphant explorer, his patrons, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, rising to receive him and his crew. In reality, during his four sojourns in the Americas, Columbus and his men committed atrocities on the Taíno, Arawak, and other Indigenous peoples, enslaving them, torturing them, and massacring them.

The rich colors, vibrant brushstrokes, and dramatic subject of the painting are typical of Eugène Delacroix’s Romantic style (see also his Botzaris Surprises the Turkish Camp, also in the Museum’s collection). It is one of a pair commissioned from Delacroix by the Russian count Anatole Demidoff, himself a sometimes explorer. The first, Columbus and His Son at the Monastery La Rábida, is now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. It depicts Columbus seven years before his voyage.