Columbus Leaving Palos. Sketches after the Painting, La Virgen de los Navegantes, by Alejo Fernández

This canvas belongs to a group of studies and sketches Sorolla produced in preparation for the monumental Columbus scenes that formed part of Huntington's Hispanic Society commission — specifically documenting his research into Alejo Fernández's celebrated early sixteenth-century altarpiece La Virgen de los Navegantes, which hangs in the Alcázar of Seville. Fernández's altarpiece, painted around 1535, was the first significant New World painting, depicting the Virgin of the Navigators sheltering Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand II of Aragon, and Amerindian figures under her mantle. Sorolla's sketches after it — recording compositional arrangements and individual figures — reveal his working method for historical subjects: direct visual research in situ rather than reliance on printed reproductions. The 1909 date places this work in the intensive preparatory phase before Huntington's murals were underway. As a working document it is historically valuable, showing how Sorolla engaged with earlier Spanish painting tradition to authorise his own historical compositions.

The oil sketches show Sorolla's note-taking approach: rapid, selective notation of compositional elements rather than finished transcription. Brushwork is economical and analytical, capturing spatial relationships and figure groupings in shorthand. The medium — oil on canvas — allows Sorolla to work quickly while retaining colour information that pencil or watercolour could not preserve.