Alexander at the Tomb of Cyrus the Great
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 42 × 91.1 cm (16 9/16 × 35 7/8 in.); Framed: 59.3 × 107.7 cm (23 5/16 × 42 3/8 in.)
- Genre
- oil on canvas
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Styles
Tags
oil paintings (visual works)paintingbuildingspainttentscanvasarchitecturearchitechtureSkyoil on canvasfrenchanimalsSoldiersalexander the greatoil paint (paint)painting (image making)horsespainting techniquespeoplebuildingfigureslandscapecloudslandscapesbushesoil paintingtreesmonumentseuropean paintingruins18th Centuryhorsepersia
About
This landscape and its companion piece, Mount Athos Carved as a Monument to Alexander the Great, reflect the late-18th-century enthusiasm for the antique, as well as the cult of sensibility that made the tomb in a landscape a favored subject for art in this period. Here Alexander, who overthrew the Persian Empire, arrives at the tomb of its founder, Cyrus the Great (590/580–c. 529 B.C.), only to find that it has been desecrated. In choosing the subjects of this pair of moralizing landscapes, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes was doubtless suggesting the transitory nature of empire and of life itself.
