Columbus Breaking The Egg - Print

Print

Hogarth's print was issued in April 1752 as the subscription ticket for his forthcoming book on art The Analysis of Beauty. Various copies of the ticket are extant, some of which are held by the British Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum and the Hunterian Museum. The print shows Columbus having just demonstrated the method for making the egg stay upright. His audience look on in amazement and one man behind him beats his forehead in frustration at the simplicity of the solution. At either end of the table are men caught still in the act of attempting to balance eggs.

Below the print is the following text:

Rec'd ... of ... five Shillings being the first Payment for a Short Tract in Quarto call'd the Analysis of Beauty; wherin Forms are consider'd in a new light, to which will be added two explanatory Prints Serios and Comical Engrav'd on large Copper Plates fit to frame for Furniture.

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:

In the print of Columbus there is evident reference to the criticisms on what Hogarth called his own discovery and in truth the connoisseurs remarks on the painter were dictated by a similar spirit to those of the critics on the navigator they first asserted there was no such line, and when he had proved that there was, gave the honour of discovery to Lomazzo, Michael Angelo, &c &c.

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 (which was probably produced in the 1720s) 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.