The Battle of Alexander at Issus
The Battle of Alexander at Issus is a 1529 oil painting by the German artist Albrecht Altdorfer, a pioneer of landscape art and a founding member of the Danube school. The painting portrays the 333 BC Battle of Issus, in which Alexander the Great secured a decisive victory over Darius III of Persia and gained crucial leverage in his campaign against the Persian Empire. The painting is widely regarded as Altdorfer's masterpiece, and is one of the most famous examples of the type of Renaissance landscape painting known as the world landscape, which here reaches an unprecedented grandeur.
The Battle of Alexander at Issus
Detail of Alexander the Great from the Alexander Mosaic c. 100 BC
Saint George in the Forest (1510)
A miniature from Triumphal Procession (1512–1516)
Albrecht Altdorfer was a German painter, engraver and architect of the Renaissance working in Regensburg, Bavaria. Along with Lucas Cranach the Elder and Wolf Huber he is regarded to be the main representative of the Danube School, setting biblical and historical subjects against landscape backgrounds of expressive colours. He is remarkable as one of the first artists to take an interest in landscape as an independent subject. As an artist also making small intricate engravings he is seen to belong to the Nuremberg Little Masters.
Albrecht Altdorfer portrait by Philipp Kilian
Resurrection by Altdorfer, 1518
Christ taking Leave of his Mother, c. 1520
Albrecht Altdorfer: Sebastian Altar in St. Florian's Priory, c. 1509–16 Upper Austria