198) Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus (c. 1451 - 1506). Italian explorer, navigator, and colonist who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Castile and Aragon. He led the first European expeditions to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, initiating the permanent European colonization of the Americas. Columbus discovered a viable sailing route to the Americas, a continent that was then unknown to the Old World. While what he thought he had discovered was a route to the Far East, he is credited with the opening of the Americas for conquest and settlement by Europeans. 

- "The Admiral was "of good stature and appearance, taller than the average and strongly limbed: the eyes lively and other parts of the face of good proportion, the hair very red, and the face somewhat ruddy and freckled ...." long visaged with cheeks somewhat high, but neither fat nor thin. He had an aquiline nose and his eyes were light in color; his complexion too was light, but kindling to a vivid red. In youth his hair was blond, but when he came to his thirtieth year it all turned white.
Another historian of the day, Bartolome de las Casas, the "Historian of the Indies," knew Columbus quite well after his return from the New World. His description agrees with the other accounts except for the inclusion of a beard. He writes that "His form was tall, above the medium: his face long and his countenance imposing: his nose aquiline: his eyes clear blue: his complexion light, tending toward a decided red, his beard and hair were red when he was young, but which cares then had early turned white."
http://www.christopher-columbus.eu/portraits.htm 

- "He probably had had red hair as a young man, which probably lightened and then turned gray by the time he was thirty"
https://books.google.it/books

- "These writings describe him as having reddish or blond hair, which turned to white early in his life, light colored eyes, as well as being a lighter-skinned person with too much sun exposure turning his face red. Accounts consistently describe Columbus as a large and physically strong man of some six feet (1.83 metres) or more in height, easily taller than the average European of his day.

The most iconic image of Columbus is a portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo, which has been reproduced in many textbooks. It agrees with descriptions of Columbus in that it shows a large man with auburn hair, but the painting dates from 1519 and cannot, therefore, have been painted from life."   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus

Posthumous portrait of Christopher Columbus by Sebastiano del Piombo, 1519. There are no known authentic portraits of Columbus.