Francisco López de Gómara
Francisco López de Gómara was a Spanish historian who worked in Seville, particularly noted for his works in which he described the early 16th century expedition undertaken by Hernán Cortés in the Spanish conquest of the New World. Although Gómara himself did not accompany Cortés, and had in fact never been to the Americas, he had firsthand access to Cortés and others of the returning conquistadores as the sources of his account. However other contemporaries, among them most notably Bernal Díaz del Castillo, criticised his work as being full of inaccuracies, and one which unjustifiably sanitised the events and aggrandised Cortés' role. As such, the reliability of his works may be called into question; yet they remain a valuable and oft-cited record of these events.
Sculpture of Francisco López de Gómara by Federico Coullaut-Valera in Soria, Spain
Cover of 1555 book
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, 1st Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of what is now mainland Mexico under the rule of the king of Castile in the early 16th century. Cortés was part of the generation of Spanish explorers and conquistadors who began the first phase of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
18th-century portrait of Cortés based on the one sent by the conqueror to Paolo Giovio, which has served as a model for many of his representations since the 16th century
Weiditz's depiction of Cortés in 1529
Copy of a portrait of Cortés dated to the year 1525
Cortés scuttling his own fleet off the coast of Veracruz in order to eliminate the possibility of retreat