PINTA, NINA and SANTA MARIA Columbus leaving Spain.
1492

Watercolor 14" x 21"


By 1482 Columbus had traveled as far as was possible in the accessible world. He had stood on Chios from which he could see the shores of Asia Minor, and it is said that he had been as far north as Iceland, and he had been close to the equator on the tropical coast of Africa. The “Grand Idea” to reach the rich and mysterious East by sailing west might have been born during this time. Whenever the plan took form, it became his obsession for the rest of his life. He arrived in Spain in 1485, a recently widowed father with a young son, deeply in debt to merchants back in Portugal, and virtually penniless. The recently married Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile were busy in the last stages of a campaign to oust the Moors from Spain. They had little time to consider funding an expensive voyage of discovery by an unknown Genoese sailor from Portugal. For seven years Columbus stubbornly petitioned for his cause, barely subsisting on earnings as an itinerant book seller.

His fortunes finally turned in early 1492. Ferdinand and Isabella succeeded in defeating the Moors and uniting all of Spain under their Catholic monarchy. On April 17 Columbus signed a contract which granted him the privileges he had requested, and three ships with the funding to carry out his plan. On August 3, just before sunrise, the PINTA, NINA and SANTA MARIA sailed down the river from Palos and out to sea.