Ritratti di Cento Capitani Illustri

[1596]

de Beer Itb 1596 C

[Rome: Domenico Gigliotti]

The Italian explorer and navigator, Cristophoro [Cristoforo] Colombo (Christopher Columbus), was born in Genoa in 1451. According to his own writing, Columbus first went to sea at the age of ten. He was an ambitious man and self-educated, reading widely from the treatises of Ptolemy, Pliny, and Marco Polo on astronomy, history and travel. Columbus made his first of four voyages to what he thought was Asia in 1492. As we know he ‘discovered’ America, beginning the somewhat devastating period of European colonisation and exploitation of the Americas. Columbus Day is celebrated every year in the United States on the second Monday of October.