Belated Tribute To Columbus

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31676, 11 May 1968, Page 5

Belated Tribute To Columbus

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(Special! Press” by

KENNETH ANTHONY)

Many countries have honoured the memory of Christopher Columbus with special stamps. But Italy, the land of his birth, was one of the last to do so, perhaps because he chose to settle in Portugal as a young man. After many years of frustration he was able to gain the support of the King of Spain to sponsor his revolutionary theory that Asia could be reached by sailing westward instead of eastward. When a portrait of the great explorer did finally appear on an Italian stamp, in October 1938, it was merely as one of a series issued by Mussolini’s government to mark the second anniversary of the proclamation of the Italian Empire—a result of the Ethiopian adventure of 1936.

Mussolini liked to give stamp collectors the opportunity of reflecting on the past glories of Italy. Though presumably even he never imagined that all America ought to have been added to his short-lived empire just because Columbus was born in .Genoa, the explorer’s portrait was included along with those of the Roman Emperor Augustus, and Leonardo da Vinci.

In contrast to this strangely muted tribute, more than a dozen different portraits of Columbus have appeared at various times on the stamps of Chile. Indeed, for over 50 years after the first issue of 1853, his was th* only por-

trait to appear on their stamps. Yet Chile was a country that Columbus never Saw.

The reason lies in the stormy politics of the time. Such was the jealousy among the rival political factions in nineteenth century Chile that everyone agreed that a strictly non - controversial figure like Columbus was the best choice for the nation’s stamps.