Christoph Kolumbus vor dem Rat von Salamanca

Emanuel Leutze painted this in 1841, soon after crossing from America to study at the art academy in Dusseldorf. He was young and unknown, and the picture was partly his audition. It caught the eye of the academy's director, who took him on. The subject came from a popular life of Columbus by the American writer Washington Irving. Leutze shows Columbus laying out his plan to sail west before a room of doubtful Spanish scholars and clergy, one of six Columbus scenes he made in these years. A decade later the same painter would produce Washington Crossing the Delaware. This canvas only reached the Louvre in 2012, given by American donors.