Columbus Breaking the Egg
Columbus Breaking the Egg is a 1752 engraving by English artist William Hogarth. Issued as the subscription ticket for his treatise on art, The Analysis of Beauty, it depicts an apocryphal tale concerning Christopher Columbus's response to detractors of his discovery of the New World. Hogarth uses the story as a parallel to what he considered his own discoveries in art.
Story
The tale of the "Egg of Columbus" is apocryphal and was ascribed to Filippo Brunelleschi with regard to the construction of the dome of the Duomo in Florence beforeit was related pertaining to Columbus. The story told by Girolamo Benzoni in his Historia del Mondo Nuovo of 1565 was that at a meal several of Columbus's detractors began to comment that any number of other people could have found their way to the New World and that Columbus's feat was unremarkable because of its simplicity. Columbus replied that it was only easy now that he had demonstrated how it was done, and by way of an example, he challenged anyone present to stand an egg on its end. After all those attempting the feat had admitted defeat Columbus demonstrated the simplicity of the challenge by crushing one end of the egg against the table which allowed it to remain upright.
Below the print is the following text:
A small note informing the reader that the price will be raised once the subscription is over is added alongside Hogarth's signature. The price for the Analysis was ten shillings: five shillings on subscription and five shillings on delivery, with the price rising to fifteen shillings for those purchasing once the subscription period had finished.
While simply executed with no great attention to detail or fineness of engraving, the ticket served a satirical purpose. Hogarth expected much the same reaction to his book as Columbus had received. Hogarth considered that he too had discovered a "New World", but one with the sphere of art rather than geography, and just as Columbus's detractors had mocked the navigator's accomplishment as simple and inevitable, Hogarth expected the art connoisseurs to mock his thesis on the serpentine "Line of Beauty" as self-evident and unimaginative. According to Trusler, Hogarth was correct in his assumption:
To strengthen the connection between himself and the Columbus of the tale he included two eels in a bowl in the centre of the table their bodies demonstrating the "Line of Beauty" as they coiled around a pair of eggs. Trusler sees a further example of Hogarth's serpentine line in the twisted tablecloth and a hint of it in the knife blade. To further underline the ironic nature of the print the composition is based on Da Vinci's The Last Supper, with the bowl containing the eels and eggs replacing the Host. Hogarth expert, Ronald Paulson also sees echoes of Hogarth's early picture of Sancho's Feast and connections to the final plate of A Harlot's Progress where the body of Moll Hackabout takes the role of the Host. Another of Hogarth's ideas on the nature of Beauty is also illustrated: the ugly, coarse, common, "lower class" attributes are given to Columbus's critics while Columbus himself is portrayed with the refined lines of the nobility—Hogarth proposed that ugliness arose where "beauty seems to submit, in some degree, to use", but here, as in many of his images, the inner qualities are reflected in the outward appearances.