1432
Van Eyck Completes the Ghent Altarpiece
Jan Van Eyck unveiled the twelve-panel oil masterpiece in Saint Bavo's Cathedral: the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, painted with a new medium that held light the way crystal holds water. Northern European painting suddenly rendered velvet, skin, and reflected brass more convincingly than anything ever made. The altarpiece has since been stolen, dismembered, hidden from Napoleon, recovered from a salt mine, and pursued by thieves more than any other painting.
Cuba Visited by Columbus
Several Portuguese expeditions, unrecorded but inferred, may have touched the northern Antilles decades before Columbus; no documentary proof exists. Columbus himself reached Cuba sixty years later on his first voyage. This year stands as a placeholder for the Atlantic's unwritten pre-Columbian history of sightings and rumor. The entry reflects the fog of pre-Columbian Atlantic navigation, a patchwork of rumor and half-knowledge rewritten by 1492.
Azores Officially Colonized by Portugal
Goncalo Velho Cabral led the first permanent settlers to the Azores archipelago, nine volcanic islands scattered across a thousand miles of the mid-Atlantic. Sugar, wheat, and woad dye were planted in the rich volcanic soil; cattle were released to graze the green slopes. The Azores became Portugal's essential mid-ocean waystation and the last possible landfall for westbound caravels setting sail into unknown waters toward whatever lay beyond.