

2020
1
Alexander at the Tomb of Cyrus the Great
1796
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. (Source: Art Institute of Chicago)
- Size:
- 16 9/16 × 35 7/8 in. (42 × 91.1 cm)
- Medium:
- Oil on canvas
- License:
- Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
- For more:
- https://www.artic.edu/artworks/100060/alexander-at-the-tomb…
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