ABSTRACT
Attention is now turned to the representations of Alexander the Great’s most famous battles, firstly through an analysis of miniatures and tapestries, and then Renaissance and Baroque artworks. Engravings and above all works by the Flemish and Italian schools of painting, there are numerous artworks that address the theme of Alexander’s epic feats. Charles Le Brun made an especially significant contribution to this corpus and he configured the most convincing and widely circulated images of the triumphs of Alexander. All early modern artists made recourse to the Classical sources when constructing the documentary dimension of their representations, but they also drew on the iconographic legacy of the genre of battle painting – whose corpus embraces the decisive battles of antiquity, as well as the most recent conflicts to have taken place in Italy and other regions of Europe. Over the course of this chapter analysis is also undertaken of the Philip V’s commission of various Italian painters to depict the Macedonian’s deeds, which thereby established parallels between Alexander’s deeds and those of the Bourbons.
