Note 460 — Chapter II

[After a picture in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Gallery (no. 253), which is a copy of the best-known portrait of Vespucius. It is claimed for it that it was painted from life by Bronzino, and that it had been preserved in the family of Vespucius till it was committed, in 1845, to Charles Edwards Lester, United States consul at Genoa. It is engraved in Lester and Foster’s Life and Voyages of Americus Vespucius (New York, 1846), and described on p. 414 of that book. Cf. also Sparks’s statement in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., iv. 117. It has been also engraved in Canovai among the Italian authorities, and was first, I think, in this country, produced in Philadelphia, in 1815, in Delaplaine’s Repository of the Lives and Portraits of distinguished American characters, and later in various other places. The likeness of Vespucius in the Royal Gallery at Naples, painted by Parmigianino, is supposed to be the one originally in the possession of the Cardinal Alexander Farnese (Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris, iii. 370, by Jomard). That artist was but eleven years old at the death of Vespucius, and could not have painted Vespucius from life. A copy in 1853 was placed in the gallery of the American Antiquarian Society (Proceedings, April, 1853, p. 15; Paine’s Portraits and Busts, etc., no. 28). C. W. Peale’s copy of the likeness in the gallery of the Grand Duke of Tuscany is in the collection belonging to the Pennsylvania Historical Society (Catalogue, 1872, no. 148). There is also a portrait in the gallery of the New York Historical Society (Catalogue, no. 131), but the origin of it is not named. De Bry gives vignette portraits in parts iv., vi., and xii. of his Grands Voyages. See Bandini’s Vita e lettere di Vespucci, chap. vii. for an account of the various likenesses.—Ed.]