The Battle of Alexander at Issus

Prompt: Describe the characteristics of the Description in The Battle of Alexander at Issus's Painting.

The Battle of Alexander at Issus is painted on a limewood panel measuring 158.4 cm × 120.3 cm (62.4 in × 47.4 in), and portrays the moment of Alexander the Great's victory. The vertical format was dictated by the space available in the room for which the painting was commissioned – each in William's set of eight was made to be the same size. At an unknown date, the panel was cut down on all sides, particularly at the top, so the sky was originally larger and the moon further from the corner of the scene. The scene is approached from an impossible viewpoint – at first only feet from the fray, the perspective gradually ascends to encompass the seas and continents in the background and eventually the curvature of the Earth itself.Thousands of horse and foot soldiers immersed in a sea of spears and lances populate the foreground. The two armies are distinguished by their dress, anachronistic though it is: whereas Alexander's men clad themselves and their horses in full suits of heavy armour, many of Darius' wear turbans and ride naked mounts. The bodies of the many fallen soldiers lie underfoot. A front of Macedonian warriors in the centre pushes against the crumbling enemy force, who flee the battlefield on the far left. The Persian king joins his army on his chariot of three horses, and is narrowly pursued by Alexander and his uniformly attired Companion cavalry. The tract of soldiers continues down the gently sloped battlefield to the campsite and cityscape by the water, gravitating toward the mountainous rise at the scene's centre.Beyond is the Mediterranean Sea and the island of Cyprus. Here, a transition in hue is made, from the browns that prevail in the lower half of the painting to the aquas that saturate the upper half. The Nile River meanders in the far distance, emptying its seven arms into the Mediterranean at the Nile Delta. South of Cyprus is the Sinai Peninsula, which forms a land bridge between Africa and Southwest Asia. The Red Sea lies beyond, eventually merging – as the mountain ranges to its left and right do – with the curved horizon.A fierce sky caught in the dichotomy between the setting sun and the crescent moon dominates more than a third of the painting. The rain-heavy clouds swirling ominously around each celestial entity are separated by a gulf of calmness, intensifying the contrast and infusing the heavens with an unearthly glow. Light from the sky spills onto the landscape: while the western continent and the Nile are bathed in the sun's light, the east and the Tower of Babel are cloaked in shadow.The painting's subject is explained in the tablet suspended from the heavens. The wording, probably supplied by William's court historian Johannes Aventinus, was originally in German but was later replaced by a Latin inscription. It translates:Alexander the Great defeating the last Darius, after 100,000 infantry and more than 10,000 cavalrymen had been killed amongst the ranks of the Persians. Whilst King Darius was able to flee with no more than 1,000 horsemen, his mother, wife, and children were taken prisoner.No date is provided for the battle alongside these casualty figures. The lower left-hand corner features Altdorfer's monogram – an 'A' within an 'A' – and the lower edge of the tablet is inscribed with "ALBRECHT ALTORFER ZU REGENSPVRG FECIT" ("Albrecht Altdorfer from Regensburg made [this]"). Tiny inscriptions on their chariot and harness identify Darius and Alexander, respectively. Each army bears a banner that reports both its total strength and its future casualties.

File:Battle of Issus - initial deployment.svg

alt=A painting showing an elaborate and fanciful palace set in a landscape of forest and mountains. The forecourt of the palace is bustling with people. Outside the palace, near a fountain sits Susannah attended by handmaids who wash her feet and comb her hair. Two old courtiers spy on her from the dense undergrowth.

Detail of the fictitious mountain in the painting's centre

Category:Collection of the Alte Pinakothek

Detail of Alexander the Great from the [[Alexander Mosaic

commons:File:Altdorfer, Albrecht - Donaulandschaft mit Schloß Wörth.jpg

alt=A panel from an altarpiece by Grünewald. On the right, the Virgin Mary gazes at the Christ Child while above her, in a sky blazing with light, God is seated on a throne surrounded by the Hosts of Heaven. To the left an orchestra of cherubim plays in a Gothic loggia.

The initial dispositions at the Battle of Issus. The Pinarus River separates the belligerents, and Issus is {{convert

alt=A military diagram. A river runs through the lower-left diagonal. On one side are the Persians, with the Orientals and Greek mercenaries, and on the other are the Macedonians, with Alexander and Parmenion. The gradient of the nearby mountains generally decreases from the top right, till the shores of the gulf in the bottom left.

alt=A large mosaic depicting an array of soldiers on horseback doing battle. Parts of it have been damaged or lost to time.

alt=Small figures of women on the battlefield, all with long red hair and all wearing feathered toques

''Susannah and the Elders'' (1526), the only other painting by Altdorfer in the [[Alte Pinakothek

Detail of soldiers from both armies. Reinhart Koselleck comments that the Persians resemble the 16th-century Turks "from their feet to their turbans."

Matthias Grünewald's ''The Virgin and Child with the Heavenly Host'' (c. 1515)

Alexander the Great#Death and succession

alt=A miniature painting showing four brightly clothed men carrying a large banner which is painted with a complex battle scene

alt=An island, and a cityscape featuring church towers

mi}} to the north. Cavalry is concentrated on the shores of the Gulf of İskenderun (or Gulf of Issus) on both sides. Alexander devotes himself to a right approach with his Companion cavalry, having unseated the Persian foothill defence.

alt=A steep mountain, upon which are built fortifications

alt= A painting of St George slaying the dragon set in a dense forest in which the figures are dwarfed by the trees. A distant landscape is seen through a break.

Detail of the oversized island of Cyprus and what is probably the city of Tarsus

A miniature from ''Triumphal Procession'' (1512–1516)

File:Horatius Cocles Stopping King Porsenna's Army outside Rome (Ludwig Refinger) - Nationalmuseum - 17244.tif

alt=A blazing sun above blue-tinged mountains and water

The Alexander Mosaic, as seen in the Naples National Archaeological Museum

Category:Paintings by Albrecht Altdorfer

List of landscapes by Albrecht Altdorfer


The Battle of Alexander at Issus

Prompt: In the context of The Battle of Alexander at Issus, explain the Analysis and interpretation and the Painting.

Anachronism is a major component of The Battle of Alexander at Issus. By dressing Alexander's men in 16th-century steel armour and Darius' men in Turkish battle dress, Altdorfer draws deliberate parallels between the Macedonian campaign and the contemporary European–Ottoman conflict. In 1529 – the year of the painting's commissioning – the Ottoman forces under Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege to the Austrian city of Vienna, then also the capital of the Holy Roman Empire and called 'the golden apple' by the Sultans. Although far inferior in number, the Austrian, German, Czech, and Spanish soldiers marshalled to defend Vienna were able to force the enemy into a retreat and stall the Ottoman advance on central Europe. It is probable the painting's underlying allegory was inspired by the siege of Vienna, given its similarities to Alexander's victory at Issus. Some critics go further, suggesting that the inclusion of anachronism may have been an element of Altdorfer's commission.In his Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, historian Reinhart Koselleck discusses Altdorfer's representation of time in a more philosophical light. After differentiating between the superficial anachronism found in the casualty figures on the army banners and the deeper anachronism ingrained in the painting's contemporary context, he posits that the latter type is less a superimposition of one historical event over another and more an acknowledgement of the recursive nature of history. With reference to Koselleck, Kathleen Davis argues: "... for [Altdorfer], 4th-century Persians look like 16th-century Turks not because he does not know the difference, but because the difference does not matter ... The Alexanderschlacht, in other words, exemplifies a premodern, untemporalized sense of time and a lack of historical consciousness ... Altdorfer's historical overlays evince an eschatological vision of history, evidence that the 16th century (and by degrees also the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) remained locked in a static, constant temporality that proleptically saturates the future as always a repetition of the same ... In such a system there can be no event as such: anticipation and arrival are together sucked into the black hole of sacred history, which is not temporalized because its time is essentially undifferentiated ..."Featured alongside the anachronism in The Battle of Alexander at Issus is a genuine lack of historicity. Altdorfer demonstrates minimal hesitance in neglecting the painting's historical integrity for the sake of its heroic style, in spite of the pains he took to research the battle. That the Persian army was up to twice the size of the Macedonian army is not clear, and the relative positioning of the soldiers as reported by ancient sources has been disregarded. According to art critic Rose-Marie Hagen, "The artist was faithful to the historical truth only when it suited him, when historical facts were compatible with the demands of his composition." Hagen also notes the placement of women on the battlefield, attributing it to Altdorfer's "passion for invention", since the wife of Darius, his mother and his daughters were waiting for Darius back at the camp, not in the thick of battle. True to form, however, Altdorfer made the aristocratic ladies "look like German courtly ladies, dressed for a hunting party" in their feathered toques:Altdorfer's primary point of reference in his research was probably Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle (Schedelsche Weltchronik), an illustrated world history published in Nuremberg in 1493. Schedel was a physician, humanist, historian and cartographer, and his Chronicle was one of the first books produced on the printing press. With a heavy reliance on the Bible, it recounts the seven ages of human history, from Creation to the birth of Christ and ending with the Apocalypse. Altdorfer's statistics for the battle of Issus mirror those of Schedel. Furthermore, the errors in Schedel's maps of the Mediterranean and Northern Africa are also present in The Battle of Alexander at Issus: the island of Cyprus is noticeably oversized, and both the mountain rise in the painting's centre and the range adjacent to the Nile do not exist. Since the Chronicle describes Alexander's victory over the Persians in terms of its proximity to Tarsus and omits mention of Issus, it is likely that the cityscape by the sea is intended to be the former city rather than the latter. Issus in the 16th century was minor and relatively unknown, whereas Tarsus was renowned for its having been a major centre of learning and philosophy in Roman times. Tarsus was also said to be the birthplace of the Apostle Paul, which may explain the presence of the church towers in Altdorfer's portrayal. Another source may have been the writings of Quintus Curtius Rufus, a 1st-century Roman historian who presents inflated figures for the number of killed and taken prisoner and the sizes of the armies.The sky bears overt metaphorical significance and is the centrepiece of the painting's symbolism. Alexander, identified by the Egyptians and others as a god of the sun, finds his victory in the sun's rays; and the Persians are routed into the darkness beneath the crescent moon, a symbol of the Near East. Considered in terms of the painting's contemporary context, the sun's triumph over the moon represents Christendom's victory over the Islamism of the Ottomans. Eschatological meaning, probably inspired by prophecies in the Book of Daniel, is imbued in the heavenly setting. In particular, Daniel 7 predicts the rise and fall of four kingdoms before the Second Coming; these were thought to be Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome at the time of the painting's creation. Altdorfer saw the Battle of Issus as a principal indicator of the transition of power from Persia to Greece, and thus as an event of cosmic significance. The battle also marked a progression toward the end of the world – an important theological concern in the 16th century, given that the last traces of Rome were diminishing with the papacy. As a member of the Regensburg council and a practising Catholic, Altdorfer frequently interacted with the Church and was surely aware of this trend of eschatological thought. Schedel, too, had calculated that the final age of the seven he identified was nigh. It may therefore be inferred that the sky's expression of the momentous event at Issus was intended to be of contemporary relevance as well.

File:Battle of Issus - initial deployment.svg

alt=A painting showing an elaborate and fanciful palace set in a landscape of forest and mountains. The forecourt of the palace is bustling with people. Outside the palace, near a fountain sits Susannah attended by handmaids who wash her feet and comb her hair. Two old courtiers spy on her from the dense undergrowth.

Detail of the fictitious mountain in the painting's centre

Category:Collection of the Alte Pinakothek

Detail of Alexander the Great from the [[Alexander Mosaic

commons:File:Altdorfer, Albrecht - Donaulandschaft mit Schloß Wörth.jpg

alt=A panel from an altarpiece by Grünewald. On the right, the Virgin Mary gazes at the Christ Child while above her, in a sky blazing with light, God is seated on a throne surrounded by the Hosts of Heaven. To the left an orchestra of cherubim plays in a Gothic loggia.

The initial dispositions at the Battle of Issus. The Pinarus River separates the belligerents, and Issus is {{convert

alt=A military diagram. A river runs through the lower-left diagonal. On one side are the Persians, with the Orientals and Greek mercenaries, and on the other are the Macedonians, with Alexander and Parmenion. The gradient of the nearby mountains generally decreases from the top right, till the shores of the gulf in the bottom left.

alt=A large mosaic depicting an array of soldiers on horseback doing battle. Parts of it have been damaged or lost to time.

alt=Small figures of women on the battlefield, all with long red hair and all wearing feathered toques

''Susannah and the Elders'' (1526), the only other painting by Altdorfer in the [[Alte Pinakothek

Detail of soldiers from both armies. Reinhart Koselleck comments that the Persians resemble the 16th-century Turks "from their feet to their turbans."

Matthias Grünewald's ''The Virgin and Child with the Heavenly Host'' (c. 1515)

Alexander the Great#Death and succession

alt=A miniature painting showing four brightly clothed men carrying a large banner which is painted with a complex battle scene

alt=An island, and a cityscape featuring church towers

mi}} to the north. Cavalry is concentrated on the shores of the Gulf of İskenderun (or Gulf of Issus) on both sides. Alexander devotes himself to a right approach with his Companion cavalry, having unseated the Persian foothill defence.

alt=A steep mountain, upon which are built fortifications

alt= A painting of St George slaying the dragon set in a dense forest in which the figures are dwarfed by the trees. A distant landscape is seen through a break.

Detail of the oversized island of Cyprus and what is probably the city of Tarsus

A miniature from ''Triumphal Procession'' (1512–1516)

File:Horatius Cocles Stopping King Porsenna's Army outside Rome (Ludwig Refinger) - Nationalmuseum - 17244.tif

alt=A blazing sun above blue-tinged mountains and water

The Alexander Mosaic, as seen in the Naples National Archaeological Museum

Category:Paintings by Albrecht Altdorfer

List of landscapes by Albrecht Altdorfer


The Battle of Alexander at Issus

Prompt: Explain the Analysis and interpretation about the Painting of this artwork, The Battle of Alexander at Issus.

Anachronism is a major component of The Battle of Alexander at Issus. By dressing Alexander's men in 16th-century steel armour and Darius' men in Turkish battle dress, Altdorfer draws deliberate parallels between the Macedonian campaign and the contemporary European–Ottoman conflict. In 1529 – the year of the painting's commissioning – the Ottoman forces under Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege to the Austrian city of Vienna, then also the capital of the Holy Roman Empire and called 'the golden apple' by the Sultans. Although far inferior in number, the Austrian, German, Czech, and Spanish soldiers marshalled to defend Vienna were able to force the enemy into a retreat and stall the Ottoman advance on central Europe. It is probable the painting's underlying allegory was inspired by the siege of Vienna, given its similarities to Alexander's victory at Issus. Some critics go further, suggesting that the inclusion of anachronism may have been an element of Altdorfer's commission.In his Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, historian Reinhart Koselleck discusses Altdorfer's representation of time in a more philosophical light. After differentiating between the superficial anachronism found in the casualty figures on the army banners and the deeper anachronism ingrained in the painting's contemporary context, he posits that the latter type is less a superimposition of one historical event over another and more an acknowledgement of the recursive nature of history. With reference to Koselleck, Kathleen Davis argues: "... for [Altdorfer], 4th-century Persians look like 16th-century Turks not because he does not know the difference, but because the difference does not matter ... The Alexanderschlacht, in other words, exemplifies a premodern, untemporalized sense of time and a lack of historical consciousness ... Altdorfer's historical overlays evince an eschatological vision of history, evidence that the 16th century (and by degrees also the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) remained locked in a static, constant temporality that proleptically saturates the future as always a repetition of the same ... In such a system there can be no event as such: anticipation and arrival are together sucked into the black hole of sacred history, which is not temporalized because its time is essentially undifferentiated ..."Featured alongside the anachronism in The Battle of Alexander at Issus is a genuine lack of historicity. Altdorfer demonstrates minimal hesitance in neglecting the painting's historical integrity for the sake of its heroic style, in spite of the pains he took to research the battle. That the Persian army was up to twice the size of the Macedonian army is not clear, and the relative positioning of the soldiers as reported by ancient sources has been disregarded. According to art critic Rose-Marie Hagen, "The artist was faithful to the historical truth only when it suited him, when historical facts were compatible with the demands of his composition." Hagen also notes the placement of women on the battlefield, attributing it to Altdorfer's "passion for invention", since the wife of Darius, his mother and his daughters were waiting for Darius back at the camp, not in the thick of battle. True to form, however, Altdorfer made the aristocratic ladies "look like German courtly ladies, dressed for a hunting party" in their feathered toques:Altdorfer's primary point of reference in his research was probably Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle (Schedelsche Weltchronik), an illustrated world history published in Nuremberg in 1493. Schedel was a physician, humanist, historian and cartographer, and his Chronicle was one of the first books produced on the printing press. With a heavy reliance on the Bible, it recounts the seven ages of human history, from Creation to the birth of Christ and ending with the Apocalypse. Altdorfer's statistics for the battle of Issus mirror those of Schedel. Furthermore, the errors in Schedel's maps of the Mediterranean and Northern Africa are also present in The Battle of Alexander at Issus: the island of Cyprus is noticeably oversized, and both the mountain rise in the painting's centre and the range adjacent to the Nile do not exist. Since the Chronicle describes Alexander's victory over the Persians in terms of its proximity to Tarsus and omits mention of Issus, it is likely that the cityscape by the sea is intended to be the former city rather than the latter. Issus in the 16th century was minor and relatively unknown, whereas Tarsus was renowned for its having been a major centre of learning and philosophy in Roman times. Tarsus was also said to be the birthplace of the Apostle Paul, which may explain the presence of the church towers in Altdorfer's portrayal. Another source may have been the writings of Quintus Curtius Rufus, a 1st-century Roman historian who presents inflated figures for the number of killed and taken prisoner and the sizes of the armies.The sky bears overt metaphorical significance and is the centrepiece of the painting's symbolism. Alexander, identified by the Egyptians and others as a god of the sun, finds his victory in the sun's rays; and the Persians are routed into the darkness beneath the crescent moon, a symbol of the Near East. Considered in terms of the painting's contemporary context, the sun's triumph over the moon represents Christendom's victory over the Islamism of the Ottomans. Eschatological meaning, probably inspired by prophecies in the Book of Daniel, is imbued in the heavenly setting. In particular, Daniel 7 predicts the rise and fall of four kingdoms before the Second Coming; these were thought to be Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome at the time of the painting's creation. Altdorfer saw the Battle of Issus as a principal indicator of the transition of power from Persia to Greece, and thus as an event of cosmic significance. The battle also marked a progression toward the end of the world – an important theological concern in the 16th century, given that the last traces of Rome were diminishing with the papacy. As a member of the Regensburg council and a practising Catholic, Altdorfer frequently interacted with the Church and was surely aware of this trend of eschatological thought. Schedel, too, had calculated that the final age of the seven he identified was nigh. It may therefore be inferred that the sky's expression of the momentous event at Issus was intended to be of contemporary relevance as well.

File:Battle of Issus - initial deployment.svg

alt=A painting showing an elaborate and fanciful palace set in a landscape of forest and mountains. The forecourt of the palace is bustling with people. Outside the palace, near a fountain sits Susannah attended by handmaids who wash her feet and comb her hair. Two old courtiers spy on her from the dense undergrowth.

Detail of the fictitious mountain in the painting's centre

Category:Collection of the Alte Pinakothek

Detail of Alexander the Great from the [[Alexander Mosaic

commons:File:Altdorfer, Albrecht - Donaulandschaft mit Schloß Wörth.jpg

alt=A panel from an altarpiece by Grünewald. On the right, the Virgin Mary gazes at the Christ Child while above her, in a sky blazing with light, God is seated on a throne surrounded by the Hosts of Heaven. To the left an orchestra of cherubim plays in a Gothic loggia.

The initial dispositions at the Battle of Issus. The Pinarus River separates the belligerents, and Issus is {{convert

alt=A military diagram. A river runs through the lower-left diagonal. On one side are the Persians, with the Orientals and Greek mercenaries, and on the other are the Macedonians, with Alexander and Parmenion. The gradient of the nearby mountains generally decreases from the top right, till the shores of the gulf in the bottom left.

alt=A large mosaic depicting an array of soldiers on horseback doing battle. Parts of it have been damaged or lost to time.

alt=Small figures of women on the battlefield, all with long red hair and all wearing feathered toques

''Susannah and the Elders'' (1526), the only other painting by Altdorfer in the [[Alte Pinakothek

Detail of soldiers from both armies. Reinhart Koselleck comments that the Persians resemble the 16th-century Turks "from their feet to their turbans."

Matthias Grünewald's ''The Virgin and Child with the Heavenly Host'' (c. 1515)

Alexander the Great#Death and succession

alt=A miniature painting showing four brightly clothed men carrying a large banner which is painted with a complex battle scene

alt=An island, and a cityscape featuring church towers

mi}} to the north. Cavalry is concentrated on the shores of the Gulf of İskenderun (or Gulf of Issus) on both sides. Alexander devotes himself to a right approach with his Companion cavalry, having unseated the Persian foothill defence.

alt=A steep mountain, upon which are built fortifications

alt= A painting of St George slaying the dragon set in a dense forest in which the figures are dwarfed by the trees. A distant landscape is seen through a break.

Detail of the oversized island of Cyprus and what is probably the city of Tarsus

A miniature from ''Triumphal Procession'' (1512–1516)

File:Horatius Cocles Stopping King Porsenna's Army outside Rome (Ludwig Refinger) - Nationalmuseum - 17244.tif

alt=A blazing sun above blue-tinged mountains and water

The Alexander Mosaic, as seen in the Naples National Archaeological Museum

Category:Paintings by Albrecht Altdorfer

List of landscapes by Albrecht Altdorfer


The Battle of Alexander at Issus

Prompt: In The Battle of Alexander at Issus, how is the Analysis and interpretation of the Painting explained?

Anachronism is a major component of The Battle of Alexander at Issus. By dressing Alexander's men in 16th-century steel armour and Darius' men in Turkish battle dress, Altdorfer draws deliberate parallels between the Macedonian campaign and the contemporary European–Ottoman conflict. In 1529 – the year of the painting's commissioning – the Ottoman forces under Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege to the Austrian city of Vienna, then also the capital of the Holy Roman Empire and called 'the golden apple' by the Sultans. Although far inferior in number, the Austrian, German, Czech, and Spanish soldiers marshalled to defend Vienna were able to force the enemy into a retreat and stall the Ottoman advance on central Europe. It is probable the painting's underlying allegory was inspired by the siege of Vienna, given its similarities to Alexander's victory at Issus. Some critics go further, suggesting that the inclusion of anachronism may have been an element of Altdorfer's commission.In his Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, historian Reinhart Koselleck discusses Altdorfer's representation of time in a more philosophical light. After differentiating between the superficial anachronism found in the casualty figures on the army banners and the deeper anachronism ingrained in the painting's contemporary context, he posits that the latter type is less a superimposition of one historical event over another and more an acknowledgement of the recursive nature of history. With reference to Koselleck, Kathleen Davis argues: "... for [Altdorfer], 4th-century Persians look like 16th-century Turks not because he does not know the difference, but because the difference does not matter ... The Alexanderschlacht, in other words, exemplifies a premodern, untemporalized sense of time and a lack of historical consciousness ... Altdorfer's historical overlays evince an eschatological vision of history, evidence that the 16th century (and by degrees also the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) remained locked in a static, constant temporality that proleptically saturates the future as always a repetition of the same ... In such a system there can be no event as such: anticipation and arrival are together sucked into the black hole of sacred history, which is not temporalized because its time is essentially undifferentiated ..."Featured alongside the anachronism in The Battle of Alexander at Issus is a genuine lack of historicity. Altdorfer demonstrates minimal hesitance in neglecting the painting's historical integrity for the sake of its heroic style, in spite of the pains he took to research the battle. That the Persian army was up to twice the size of the Macedonian army is not clear, and the relative positioning of the soldiers as reported by ancient sources has been disregarded. According to art critic Rose-Marie Hagen, "The artist was faithful to the historical truth only when it suited him, when historical facts were compatible with the demands of his composition." Hagen also notes the placement of women on the battlefield, attributing it to Altdorfer's "passion for invention", since the wife of Darius, his mother and his daughters were waiting for Darius back at the camp, not in the thick of battle. True to form, however, Altdorfer made the aristocratic ladies "look like German courtly ladies, dressed for a hunting party" in their feathered toques:Altdorfer's primary point of reference in his research was probably Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle (Schedelsche Weltchronik), an illustrated world history published in Nuremberg in 1493. Schedel was a physician, humanist, historian and cartographer, and his Chronicle was one of the first books produced on the printing press. With a heavy reliance on the Bible, it recounts the seven ages of human history, from Creation to the birth of Christ and ending with the Apocalypse. Altdorfer's statistics for the battle of Issus mirror those of Schedel. Furthermore, the errors in Schedel's maps of the Mediterranean and Northern Africa are also present in The Battle of Alexander at Issus: the island of Cyprus is noticeably oversized, and both the mountain rise in the painting's centre and the range adjacent to the Nile do not exist. Since the Chronicle describes Alexander's victory over the Persians in terms of its proximity to Tarsus and omits mention of Issus, it is likely that the cityscape by the sea is intended to be the former city rather than the latter. Issus in the 16th century was minor and relatively unknown, whereas Tarsus was renowned for its having been a major centre of learning and philosophy in Roman times. Tarsus was also said to be the birthplace of the Apostle Paul, which may explain the presence of the church towers in Altdorfer's portrayal. Another source may have been the writings of Quintus Curtius Rufus, a 1st-century Roman historian who presents inflated figures for the number of killed and taken prisoner and the sizes of the armies.The sky bears overt metaphorical significance and is the centrepiece of the painting's symbolism. Alexander, identified by the Egyptians and others as a god of the sun, finds his victory in the sun's rays; and the Persians are routed into the darkness beneath the crescent moon, a symbol of the Near East. Considered in terms of the painting's contemporary context, the sun's triumph over the moon represents Christendom's victory over the Islamism of the Ottomans. Eschatological meaning, probably inspired by prophecies in the Book of Daniel, is imbued in the heavenly setting. In particular, Daniel 7 predicts the rise and fall of four kingdoms before the Second Coming; these were thought to be Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome at the time of the painting's creation. Altdorfer saw the Battle of Issus as a principal indicator of the transition of power from Persia to Greece, and thus as an event of cosmic significance. The battle also marked a progression toward the end of the world – an important theological concern in the 16th century, given that the last traces of Rome were diminishing with the papacy. As a member of the Regensburg council and a practising Catholic, Altdorfer frequently interacted with the Church and was surely aware of this trend of eschatological thought. Schedel, too, had calculated that the final age of the seven he identified was nigh. It may therefore be inferred that the sky's expression of the momentous event at Issus was intended to be of contemporary relevance as well.

File:Battle of Issus - initial deployment.svg

alt=A painting showing an elaborate and fanciful palace set in a landscape of forest and mountains. The forecourt of the palace is bustling with people. Outside the palace, near a fountain sits Susannah attended by handmaids who wash her feet and comb her hair. Two old courtiers spy on her from the dense undergrowth.

Detail of the fictitious mountain in the painting's centre

Category:Collection of the Alte Pinakothek

Detail of Alexander the Great from the [[Alexander Mosaic

commons:File:Altdorfer, Albrecht - Donaulandschaft mit Schloß Wörth.jpg

alt=A panel from an altarpiece by Grünewald. On the right, the Virgin Mary gazes at the Christ Child while above her, in a sky blazing with light, God is seated on a throne surrounded by the Hosts of Heaven. To the left an orchestra of cherubim plays in a Gothic loggia.

The initial dispositions at the Battle of Issus. The Pinarus River separates the belligerents, and Issus is {{convert

alt=A military diagram. A river runs through the lower-left diagonal. On one side are the Persians, with the Orientals and Greek mercenaries, and on the other are the Macedonians, with Alexander and Parmenion. The gradient of the nearby mountains generally decreases from the top right, till the shores of the gulf in the bottom left.

alt=A large mosaic depicting an array of soldiers on horseback doing battle. Parts of it have been damaged or lost to time.

alt=Small figures of women on the battlefield, all with long red hair and all wearing feathered toques

''Susannah and the Elders'' (1526), the only other painting by Altdorfer in the [[Alte Pinakothek

Detail of soldiers from both armies. Reinhart Koselleck comments that the Persians resemble the 16th-century Turks "from their feet to their turbans."

Matthias Grünewald's ''The Virgin and Child with the Heavenly Host'' (c. 1515)

Alexander the Great#Death and succession

alt=A miniature painting showing four brightly clothed men carrying a large banner which is painted with a complex battle scene

alt=An island, and a cityscape featuring church towers

mi}} to the north. Cavalry is concentrated on the shores of the Gulf of İskenderun (or Gulf of Issus) on both sides. Alexander devotes himself to a right approach with his Companion cavalry, having unseated the Persian foothill defence.

alt=A steep mountain, upon which are built fortifications

alt= A painting of St George slaying the dragon set in a dense forest in which the figures are dwarfed by the trees. A distant landscape is seen through a break.

Detail of the oversized island of Cyprus and what is probably the city of Tarsus

A miniature from ''Triumphal Procession'' (1512–1516)

File:Horatius Cocles Stopping King Porsenna's Army outside Rome (Ludwig Refinger) - Nationalmuseum - 17244.tif

alt=A blazing sun above blue-tinged mountains and water

The Alexander Mosaic, as seen in the Naples National Archaeological Museum

Category:Paintings by Albrecht Altdorfer

List of landscapes by Albrecht Altdorfer


The Battle of Alexander at Issus

Prompt: Describe the characteristics of the Analysis and interpretation in The Battle of Alexander at Issus's Painting.

Anachronism is a major component of The Battle of Alexander at Issus. By dressing Alexander's men in 16th-century steel armour and Darius' men in Turkish battle dress, Altdorfer draws deliberate parallels between the Macedonian campaign and the contemporary European–Ottoman conflict. In 1529 – the year of the painting's commissioning – the Ottoman forces under Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege to the Austrian city of Vienna, then also the capital of the Holy Roman Empire and called 'the golden apple' by the Sultans. Although far inferior in number, the Austrian, German, Czech, and Spanish soldiers marshalled to defend Vienna were able to force the enemy into a retreat and stall the Ottoman advance on central Europe. It is probable the painting's underlying allegory was inspired by the siege of Vienna, given its similarities to Alexander's victory at Issus. Some critics go further, suggesting that the inclusion of anachronism may have been an element of Altdorfer's commission.In his Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, historian Reinhart Koselleck discusses Altdorfer's representation of time in a more philosophical light. After differentiating between the superficial anachronism found in the casualty figures on the army banners and the deeper anachronism ingrained in the painting's contemporary context, he posits that the latter type is less a superimposition of one historical event over another and more an acknowledgement of the recursive nature of history. With reference to Koselleck, Kathleen Davis argues: "... for [Altdorfer], 4th-century Persians look like 16th-century Turks not because he does not know the difference, but because the difference does not matter ... The Alexanderschlacht, in other words, exemplifies a premodern, untemporalized sense of time and a lack of historical consciousness ... Altdorfer's historical overlays evince an eschatological vision of history, evidence that the 16th century (and by degrees also the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) remained locked in a static, constant temporality that proleptically saturates the future as always a repetition of the same ... In such a system there can be no event as such: anticipation and arrival are together sucked into the black hole of sacred history, which is not temporalized because its time is essentially undifferentiated ..."Featured alongside the anachronism in The Battle of Alexander at Issus is a genuine lack of historicity. Altdorfer demonstrates minimal hesitance in neglecting the painting's historical integrity for the sake of its heroic style, in spite of the pains he took to research the battle. That the Persian army was up to twice the size of the Macedonian army is not clear, and the relative positioning of the soldiers as reported by ancient sources has been disregarded. According to art critic Rose-Marie Hagen, "The artist was faithful to the historical truth only when it suited him, when historical facts were compatible with the demands of his composition." Hagen also notes the placement of women on the battlefield, attributing it to Altdorfer's "passion for invention", since the wife of Darius, his mother and his daughters were waiting for Darius back at the camp, not in the thick of battle. True to form, however, Altdorfer made the aristocratic ladies "look like German courtly ladies, dressed for a hunting party" in their feathered toques:Altdorfer's primary point of reference in his research was probably Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle (Schedelsche Weltchronik), an illustrated world history published in Nuremberg in 1493. Schedel was a physician, humanist, historian and cartographer, and his Chronicle was one of the first books produced on the printing press. With a heavy reliance on the Bible, it recounts the seven ages of human history, from Creation to the birth of Christ and ending with the Apocalypse. Altdorfer's statistics for the battle of Issus mirror those of Schedel. Furthermore, the errors in Schedel's maps of the Mediterranean and Northern Africa are also present in The Battle of Alexander at Issus: the island of Cyprus is noticeably oversized, and both the mountain rise in the painting's centre and the range adjacent to the Nile do not exist. Since the Chronicle describes Alexander's victory over the Persians in terms of its proximity to Tarsus and omits mention of Issus, it is likely that the cityscape by the sea is intended to be the former city rather than the latter. Issus in the 16th century was minor and relatively unknown, whereas Tarsus was renowned for its having been a major centre of learning and philosophy in Roman times. Tarsus was also said to be the birthplace of the Apostle Paul, which may explain the presence of the church towers in Altdorfer's portrayal. Another source may have been the writings of Quintus Curtius Rufus, a 1st-century Roman historian who presents inflated figures for the number of killed and taken prisoner and the sizes of the armies.The sky bears overt metaphorical significance and is the centrepiece of the painting's symbolism. Alexander, identified by the Egyptians and others as a god of the sun, finds his victory in the sun's rays; and the Persians are routed into the darkness beneath the crescent moon, a symbol of the Near East. Considered in terms of the painting's contemporary context, the sun's triumph over the moon represents Christendom's victory over the Islamism of the Ottomans. Eschatological meaning, probably inspired by prophecies in the Book of Daniel, is imbued in the heavenly setting. In particular, Daniel 7 predicts the rise and fall of four kingdoms before the Second Coming; these were thought to be Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome at the time of the painting's creation. Altdorfer saw the Battle of Issus as a principal indicator of the transition of power from Persia to Greece, and thus as an event of cosmic significance. The battle also marked a progression toward the end of the world – an important theological concern in the 16th century, given that the last traces of Rome were diminishing with the papacy. As a member of the Regensburg council and a practising Catholic, Altdorfer frequently interacted with the Church and was surely aware of this trend of eschatological thought. Schedel, too, had calculated that the final age of the seven he identified was nigh. It may therefore be inferred that the sky's expression of the momentous event at Issus was intended to be of contemporary relevance as well.

File:Battle of Issus - initial deployment.svg

alt=A painting showing an elaborate and fanciful palace set in a landscape of forest and mountains. The forecourt of the palace is bustling with people. Outside the palace, near a fountain sits Susannah attended by handmaids who wash her feet and comb her hair. Two old courtiers spy on her from the dense undergrowth.

Detail of the fictitious mountain in the painting's centre

Category:Collection of the Alte Pinakothek

Detail of Alexander the Great from the [[Alexander Mosaic

commons:File:Altdorfer, Albrecht - Donaulandschaft mit Schloß Wörth.jpg

alt=A panel from an altarpiece by Grünewald. On the right, the Virgin Mary gazes at the Christ Child while above her, in a sky blazing with light, God is seated on a throne surrounded by the Hosts of Heaven. To the left an orchestra of cherubim plays in a Gothic loggia.

The initial dispositions at the Battle of Issus. The Pinarus River separates the belligerents, and Issus is {{convert

alt=A military diagram. A river runs through the lower-left diagonal. On one side are the Persians, with the Orientals and Greek mercenaries, and on the other are the Macedonians, with Alexander and Parmenion. The gradient of the nearby mountains generally decreases from the top right, till the shores of the gulf in the bottom left.

alt=A large mosaic depicting an array of soldiers on horseback doing battle. Parts of it have been damaged or lost to time.

alt=Small figures of women on the battlefield, all with long red hair and all wearing feathered toques

''Susannah and the Elders'' (1526), the only other painting by Altdorfer in the [[Alte Pinakothek

Detail of soldiers from both armies. Reinhart Koselleck comments that the Persians resemble the 16th-century Turks "from their feet to their turbans."

Matthias Grünewald's ''The Virgin and Child with the Heavenly Host'' (c. 1515)

Alexander the Great#Death and succession

alt=A miniature painting showing four brightly clothed men carrying a large banner which is painted with a complex battle scene

alt=An island, and a cityscape featuring church towers

mi}} to the north. Cavalry is concentrated on the shores of the Gulf of İskenderun (or Gulf of Issus) on both sides. Alexander devotes himself to a right approach with his Companion cavalry, having unseated the Persian foothill defence.

alt=A steep mountain, upon which are built fortifications

alt= A painting of St George slaying the dragon set in a dense forest in which the figures are dwarfed by the trees. A distant landscape is seen through a break.

Detail of the oversized island of Cyprus and what is probably the city of Tarsus

A miniature from ''Triumphal Procession'' (1512–1516)

File:Horatius Cocles Stopping King Porsenna's Army outside Rome (Ludwig Refinger) - Nationalmuseum - 17244.tif

alt=A blazing sun above blue-tinged mountains and water

The Alexander Mosaic, as seen in the Naples National Archaeological Museum

Category:Paintings by Albrecht Altdorfer

List of landscapes by Albrecht Altdorfer


The Battle of Alexander at Issus

Prompt: Focus on The Battle of Alexander at Issus and explain the Legacy.

The Battle of Alexander at Issus remained part of the royal collection of the Dukes of Bavaria for centuries. By the late 18th century, it was regularly featured in public galleries at the Schleissheim Palace. The painting was one of 72 taken to Paris in 1800 by the invading armies of Napoleon I (1769–1821), who was a noted admirer of Alexander the Great. The Louvre held it until 1804, when Napoleon declared himself Emperor of France and took it for his own use. When the Prussians captured the Château de Saint-Cloud in 1814 as part of the War of the Sixth Coalition, they supposedly found the painting hanging in Napoleon's bathroom.The Battle of Alexander at Issus and 26 others taken in the 1800 invasion were subsequently restored to the King of Bavaria in 1815. Five of the paintings in William IV's original set of eight – including The Battle of Alexander at Issus – later passed from the royal collection to the Alte Pinakothek art museum in Munich, Germany, where they remain; the other three are in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm, having been looted by the Swedish army in the Thirty Years War of 1618–1648. Susannah and the Elders is the only other work by Altdorfer in the Alte Pinakothek.Contextually, the painting forms part of the Northern Renaissance, a resurgence of classical humanism and culture in northern Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. The Renaissance induced a new kind of social individualism which Altdorfer expressed through the heroic emphasis on Alexander and Darius, and which is reflected in the specifics of the painting's commission and by the subjects of its companion pieces. According to Rose-Marie Hagen, "During the Renaissance people no longer saw themselves solely as members of a social group, as the citizens of a town, or as sinners before God in whose eyes all were equal. They had become aware of the unique qualities that distinguished one person from another. Unlike the Middle Ages, the Renaissance celebrated the individual. Altdorfer may have painted row after row of apparently identical warriors, but the spectators themselves would identify with Alexander and Darius, figures who had names, whose significance was indicated by the cord which hung down from the tablet above them."Altdorfer was not only a pioneer of landscape, but also a practitioner of early incarnations of the Romanticism and expressionism which impacted the arts so greatly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Kenneth Clark writes of Altdorfer and contemporaries Grünewald and Bosch, "They are what we now call 'expressionist' artists, a term which is not as worthless as it sounds, because, in fact, the symbols of expressionism are remarkably consistent, and we find in the work of these early 16th-century landscape painters not only the same spirit but the same shapes and iconographical motives which recur in the work of such recent expressionists as van Gogh, Max Ernst, Graham Sutherland and Walt Disney." According to art critic Pia F. Cuneo, "Altdorfer's construction of landscape on a cosmic scale" in the Battle of Alexander at Issus, and his "spiritual and aesthetic affinities with Romanticism and Modern art (in particular, German Expressionism)", "have been especially singled out for praise".The Battle of Alexander at Issus is typically considered to be Altdorfer's masterpiece. Cuneo states that the painting is usually "considered in splendid isolation from its fifteen other companion pieces, based on the assumption that it either metonymically stands in for the entire cycle, or that its perceived aesthetic predominance merits exclusive focus." German writer Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) was one of many who saw the painting in the Louvre and marvelled, calling it a "small painted Iliad". Reinhart Koselleck comments that Altdorfer's depiction of the thousands of soldiers was executed with "a mastery previously unknown", and Kathleen Davis describes the painting as "epochal in every sense".

File:Battle of Issus - initial deployment.svg

alt=A painting showing an elaborate and fanciful palace set in a landscape of forest and mountains. The forecourt of the palace is bustling with people. Outside the palace, near a fountain sits Susannah attended by handmaids who wash her feet and comb her hair. Two old courtiers spy on her from the dense undergrowth.

Detail of the fictitious mountain in the painting's centre

Category:Collection of the Alte Pinakothek

Detail of Alexander the Great from the [[Alexander Mosaic

commons:File:Altdorfer, Albrecht - Donaulandschaft mit Schloß Wörth.jpg

alt=A panel from an altarpiece by Grünewald. On the right, the Virgin Mary gazes at the Christ Child while above her, in a sky blazing with light, God is seated on a throne surrounded by the Hosts of Heaven. To the left an orchestra of cherubim plays in a Gothic loggia.

The initial dispositions at the Battle of Issus. The Pinarus River separates the belligerents, and Issus is {{convert

alt=A military diagram. A river runs through the lower-left diagonal. On one side are the Persians, with the Orientals and Greek mercenaries, and on the other are the Macedonians, with Alexander and Parmenion. The gradient of the nearby mountains generally decreases from the top right, till the shores of the gulf in the bottom left.

alt=A large mosaic depicting an array of soldiers on horseback doing battle. Parts of it have been damaged or lost to time.

alt=Small figures of women on the battlefield, all with long red hair and all wearing feathered toques

''Susannah and the Elders'' (1526), the only other painting by Altdorfer in the [[Alte Pinakothek

Detail of soldiers from both armies. Reinhart Koselleck comments that the Persians resemble the 16th-century Turks "from their feet to their turbans."

Matthias Grünewald's ''The Virgin and Child with the Heavenly Host'' (c. 1515)

Alexander the Great#Death and succession

alt=A miniature painting showing four brightly clothed men carrying a large banner which is painted with a complex battle scene

alt=An island, and a cityscape featuring church towers

mi}} to the north. Cavalry is concentrated on the shores of the Gulf of İskenderun (or Gulf of Issus) on both sides. Alexander devotes himself to a right approach with his Companion cavalry, having unseated the Persian foothill defence.

alt=A steep mountain, upon which are built fortifications

alt= A painting of St George slaying the dragon set in a dense forest in which the figures are dwarfed by the trees. A distant landscape is seen through a break.

Detail of the oversized island of Cyprus and what is probably the city of Tarsus

A miniature from ''Triumphal Procession'' (1512–1516)

File:Horatius Cocles Stopping King Porsenna's Army outside Rome (Ludwig Refinger) - Nationalmuseum - 17244.tif

alt=A blazing sun above blue-tinged mountains and water

The Alexander Mosaic, as seen in the Naples National Archaeological Museum

Category:Paintings by Albrecht Altdorfer

List of landscapes by Albrecht Altdorfer


The Battle of Alexander at Issus

Prompt: Explain the Legacy of this artwork, The Battle of Alexander at Issus.

The Battle of Alexander at Issus remained part of the royal collection of the Dukes of Bavaria for centuries. By the late 18th century, it was regularly featured in public galleries at the Schleissheim Palace. The painting was one of 72 taken to Paris in 1800 by the invading armies of Napoleon I (1769–1821), who was a noted admirer of Alexander the Great. The Louvre held it until 1804, when Napoleon declared himself Emperor of France and took it for his own use. When the Prussians captured the Château de Saint-Cloud in 1814 as part of the War of the Sixth Coalition, they supposedly found the painting hanging in Napoleon's bathroom.The Battle of Alexander at Issus and 26 others taken in the 1800 invasion were subsequently restored to the King of Bavaria in 1815. Five of the paintings in William IV's original set of eight – including The Battle of Alexander at Issus – later passed from the royal collection to the Alte Pinakothek art museum in Munich, Germany, where they remain; the other three are in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm, having been looted by the Swedish army in the Thirty Years War of 1618–1648. Susannah and the Elders is the only other work by Altdorfer in the Alte Pinakothek.Contextually, the painting forms part of the Northern Renaissance, a resurgence of classical humanism and culture in northern Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. The Renaissance induced a new kind of social individualism which Altdorfer expressed through the heroic emphasis on Alexander and Darius, and which is reflected in the specifics of the painting's commission and by the subjects of its companion pieces. According to Rose-Marie Hagen, "During the Renaissance people no longer saw themselves solely as members of a social group, as the citizens of a town, or as sinners before God in whose eyes all were equal. They had become aware of the unique qualities that distinguished one person from another. Unlike the Middle Ages, the Renaissance celebrated the individual. Altdorfer may have painted row after row of apparently identical warriors, but the spectators themselves would identify with Alexander and Darius, figures who had names, whose significance was indicated by the cord which hung down from the tablet above them."Altdorfer was not only a pioneer of landscape, but also a practitioner of early incarnations of the Romanticism and expressionism which impacted the arts so greatly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Kenneth Clark writes of Altdorfer and contemporaries Grünewald and Bosch, "They are what we now call 'expressionist' artists, a term which is not as worthless as it sounds, because, in fact, the symbols of expressionism are remarkably consistent, and we find in the work of these early 16th-century landscape painters not only the same spirit but the same shapes and iconographical motives which recur in the work of such recent expressionists as van Gogh, Max Ernst, Graham Sutherland and Walt Disney." According to art critic Pia F. Cuneo, "Altdorfer's construction of landscape on a cosmic scale" in the Battle of Alexander at Issus, and his "spiritual and aesthetic affinities with Romanticism and Modern art (in particular, German Expressionism)", "have been especially singled out for praise".The Battle of Alexander at Issus is typically considered to be Altdorfer's masterpiece. Cuneo states that the painting is usually "considered in splendid isolation from its fifteen other companion pieces, based on the assumption that it either metonymically stands in for the entire cycle, or that its perceived aesthetic predominance merits exclusive focus." German writer Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) was one of many who saw the painting in the Louvre and marvelled, calling it a "small painted Iliad". Reinhart Koselleck comments that Altdorfer's depiction of the thousands of soldiers was executed with "a mastery previously unknown", and Kathleen Davis describes the painting as "epochal in every sense".

File:Battle of Issus - initial deployment.svg

alt=A painting showing an elaborate and fanciful palace set in a landscape of forest and mountains. The forecourt of the palace is bustling with people. Outside the palace, near a fountain sits Susannah attended by handmaids who wash her feet and comb her hair. Two old courtiers spy on her from the dense undergrowth.

Detail of the fictitious mountain in the painting's centre

Category:Collection of the Alte Pinakothek

Detail of Alexander the Great from the [[Alexander Mosaic

commons:File:Altdorfer, Albrecht - Donaulandschaft mit Schloß Wörth.jpg

alt=A panel from an altarpiece by Grünewald. On the right, the Virgin Mary gazes at the Christ Child while above her, in a sky blazing with light, God is seated on a throne surrounded by the Hosts of Heaven. To the left an orchestra of cherubim plays in a Gothic loggia.

The initial dispositions at the Battle of Issus. The Pinarus River separates the belligerents, and Issus is {{convert

alt=A military diagram. A river runs through the lower-left diagonal. On one side are the Persians, with the Orientals and Greek mercenaries, and on the other are the Macedonians, with Alexander and Parmenion. The gradient of the nearby mountains generally decreases from the top right, till the shores of the gulf in the bottom left.

alt=A large mosaic depicting an array of soldiers on horseback doing battle. Parts of it have been damaged or lost to time.

alt=Small figures of women on the battlefield, all with long red hair and all wearing feathered toques

''Susannah and the Elders'' (1526), the only other painting by Altdorfer in the [[Alte Pinakothek

Detail of soldiers from both armies. Reinhart Koselleck comments that the Persians resemble the 16th-century Turks "from their feet to their turbans."

Matthias Grünewald's ''The Virgin and Child with the Heavenly Host'' (c. 1515)

Alexander the Great#Death and succession

alt=A miniature painting showing four brightly clothed men carrying a large banner which is painted with a complex battle scene

alt=An island, and a cityscape featuring church towers

mi}} to the north. Cavalry is concentrated on the shores of the Gulf of İskenderun (or Gulf of Issus) on both sides. Alexander devotes himself to a right approach with his Companion cavalry, having unseated the Persian foothill defence.

alt=A steep mountain, upon which are built fortifications

alt= A painting of St George slaying the dragon set in a dense forest in which the figures are dwarfed by the trees. A distant landscape is seen through a break.

Detail of the oversized island of Cyprus and what is probably the city of Tarsus

A miniature from ''Triumphal Procession'' (1512–1516)

File:Horatius Cocles Stopping King Porsenna's Army outside Rome (Ludwig Refinger) - Nationalmuseum - 17244.tif

alt=A blazing sun above blue-tinged mountains and water

The Alexander Mosaic, as seen in the Naples National Archaeological Museum

Category:Paintings by Albrecht Altdorfer

List of landscapes by Albrecht Altdorfer


The Battle of Alexander at Issus

Prompt: How does The Battle of Alexander at Issus explain its Legacy?

The Battle of Alexander at Issus remained part of the royal collection of the Dukes of Bavaria for centuries. By the late 18th century, it was regularly featured in public galleries at the Schleissheim Palace. The painting was one of 72 taken to Paris in 1800 by the invading armies of Napoleon I (1769–1821), who was a noted admirer of Alexander the Great. The Louvre held it until 1804, when Napoleon declared himself Emperor of France and took it for his own use. When the Prussians captured the Château de Saint-Cloud in 1814 as part of the War of the Sixth Coalition, they supposedly found the painting hanging in Napoleon's bathroom.The Battle of Alexander at Issus and 26 others taken in the 1800 invasion were subsequently restored to the King of Bavaria in 1815. Five of the paintings in William IV's original set of eight – including The Battle of Alexander at Issus – later passed from the royal collection to the Alte Pinakothek art museum in Munich, Germany, where they remain; the other three are in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm, having been looted by the Swedish army in the Thirty Years War of 1618–1648. Susannah and the Elders is the only other work by Altdorfer in the Alte Pinakothek.Contextually, the painting forms part of the Northern Renaissance, a resurgence of classical humanism and culture in northern Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. The Renaissance induced a new kind of social individualism which Altdorfer expressed through the heroic emphasis on Alexander and Darius, and which is reflected in the specifics of the painting's commission and by the subjects of its companion pieces. According to Rose-Marie Hagen, "During the Renaissance people no longer saw themselves solely as members of a social group, as the citizens of a town, or as sinners before God in whose eyes all were equal. They had become aware of the unique qualities that distinguished one person from another. Unlike the Middle Ages, the Renaissance celebrated the individual. Altdorfer may have painted row after row of apparently identical warriors, but the spectators themselves would identify with Alexander and Darius, figures who had names, whose significance was indicated by the cord which hung down from the tablet above them."Altdorfer was not only a pioneer of landscape, but also a practitioner of early incarnations of the Romanticism and expressionism which impacted the arts so greatly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Kenneth Clark writes of Altdorfer and contemporaries Grünewald and Bosch, "They are what we now call 'expressionist' artists, a term which is not as worthless as it sounds, because, in fact, the symbols of expressionism are remarkably consistent, and we find in the work of these early 16th-century landscape painters not only the same spirit but the same shapes and iconographical motives which recur in the work of such recent expressionists as van Gogh, Max Ernst, Graham Sutherland and Walt Disney." According to art critic Pia F. Cuneo, "Altdorfer's construction of landscape on a cosmic scale" in the Battle of Alexander at Issus, and his "spiritual and aesthetic affinities with Romanticism and Modern art (in particular, German Expressionism)", "have been especially singled out for praise".The Battle of Alexander at Issus is typically considered to be Altdorfer's masterpiece. Cuneo states that the painting is usually "considered in splendid isolation from its fifteen other companion pieces, based on the assumption that it either metonymically stands in for the entire cycle, or that its perceived aesthetic predominance merits exclusive focus." German writer Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) was one of many who saw the painting in the Louvre and marvelled, calling it a "small painted Iliad". Reinhart Koselleck comments that Altdorfer's depiction of the thousands of soldiers was executed with "a mastery previously unknown", and Kathleen Davis describes the painting as "epochal in every sense".

File:Battle of Issus - initial deployment.svg

alt=A painting showing an elaborate and fanciful palace set in a landscape of forest and mountains. The forecourt of the palace is bustling with people. Outside the palace, near a fountain sits Susannah attended by handmaids who wash her feet and comb her hair. Two old courtiers spy on her from the dense undergrowth.

Detail of the fictitious mountain in the painting's centre

Category:Collection of the Alte Pinakothek

Detail of Alexander the Great from the [[Alexander Mosaic

commons:File:Altdorfer, Albrecht - Donaulandschaft mit Schloß Wörth.jpg

alt=A panel from an altarpiece by Grünewald. On the right, the Virgin Mary gazes at the Christ Child while above her, in a sky blazing with light, God is seated on a throne surrounded by the Hosts of Heaven. To the left an orchestra of cherubim plays in a Gothic loggia.

The initial dispositions at the Battle of Issus. The Pinarus River separates the belligerents, and Issus is {{convert

alt=A military diagram. A river runs through the lower-left diagonal. On one side are the Persians, with the Orientals and Greek mercenaries, and on the other are the Macedonians, with Alexander and Parmenion. The gradient of the nearby mountains generally decreases from the top right, till the shores of the gulf in the bottom left.

alt=A large mosaic depicting an array of soldiers on horseback doing battle. Parts of it have been damaged or lost to time.

alt=Small figures of women on the battlefield, all with long red hair and all wearing feathered toques

''Susannah and the Elders'' (1526), the only other painting by Altdorfer in the [[Alte Pinakothek

Detail of soldiers from both armies. Reinhart Koselleck comments that the Persians resemble the 16th-century Turks "from their feet to their turbans."

Matthias Grünewald's ''The Virgin and Child with the Heavenly Host'' (c. 1515)

Alexander the Great#Death and succession

alt=A miniature painting showing four brightly clothed men carrying a large banner which is painted with a complex battle scene

alt=An island, and a cityscape featuring church towers

mi}} to the north. Cavalry is concentrated on the shores of the Gulf of İskenderun (or Gulf of Issus) on both sides. Alexander devotes himself to a right approach with his Companion cavalry, having unseated the Persian foothill defence.

alt=A steep mountain, upon which are built fortifications

alt= A painting of St George slaying the dragon set in a dense forest in which the figures are dwarfed by the trees. A distant landscape is seen through a break.

Detail of the oversized island of Cyprus and what is probably the city of Tarsus

A miniature from ''Triumphal Procession'' (1512–1516)

File:Horatius Cocles Stopping King Porsenna's Army outside Rome (Ludwig Refinger) - Nationalmuseum - 17244.tif

alt=A blazing sun above blue-tinged mountains and water

The Alexander Mosaic, as seen in the Naples National Archaeological Museum

Category:Paintings by Albrecht Altdorfer

List of landscapes by Albrecht Altdorfer


The Battle of Alexander at Issus

Prompt: In The Battle of Alexander at Issus, how is the Legacy discussed?

The Battle of Alexander at Issus remained part of the royal collection of the Dukes of Bavaria for centuries. By the late 18th century, it was regularly featured in public galleries at the Schleissheim Palace. The painting was one of 72 taken to Paris in 1800 by the invading armies of Napoleon I (1769–1821), who was a noted admirer of Alexander the Great. The Louvre held it until 1804, when Napoleon declared himself Emperor of France and took it for his own use. When the Prussians captured the Château de Saint-Cloud in 1814 as part of the War of the Sixth Coalition, they supposedly found the painting hanging in Napoleon's bathroom.The Battle of Alexander at Issus and 26 others taken in the 1800 invasion were subsequently restored to the King of Bavaria in 1815. Five of the paintings in William IV's original set of eight – including The Battle of Alexander at Issus – later passed from the royal collection to the Alte Pinakothek art museum in Munich, Germany, where they remain; the other three are in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm, having been looted by the Swedish army in the Thirty Years War of 1618–1648. Susannah and the Elders is the only other work by Altdorfer in the Alte Pinakothek.Contextually, the painting forms part of the Northern Renaissance, a resurgence of classical humanism and culture in northern Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. The Renaissance induced a new kind of social individualism which Altdorfer expressed through the heroic emphasis on Alexander and Darius, and which is reflected in the specifics of the painting's commission and by the subjects of its companion pieces. According to Rose-Marie Hagen, "During the Renaissance people no longer saw themselves solely as members of a social group, as the citizens of a town, or as sinners before God in whose eyes all were equal. They had become aware of the unique qualities that distinguished one person from another. Unlike the Middle Ages, the Renaissance celebrated the individual. Altdorfer may have painted row after row of apparently identical warriors, but the spectators themselves would identify with Alexander and Darius, figures who had names, whose significance was indicated by the cord which hung down from the tablet above them."Altdorfer was not only a pioneer of landscape, but also a practitioner of early incarnations of the Romanticism and expressionism which impacted the arts so greatly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Kenneth Clark writes of Altdorfer and contemporaries Grünewald and Bosch, "They are what we now call 'expressionist' artists, a term which is not as worthless as it sounds, because, in fact, the symbols of expressionism are remarkably consistent, and we find in the work of these early 16th-century landscape painters not only the same spirit but the same shapes and iconographical motives which recur in the work of such recent expressionists as van Gogh, Max Ernst, Graham Sutherland and Walt Disney." According to art critic Pia F. Cuneo, "Altdorfer's construction of landscape on a cosmic scale" in the Battle of Alexander at Issus, and his "spiritual and aesthetic affinities with Romanticism and Modern art (in particular, German Expressionism)", "have been especially singled out for praise".The Battle of Alexander at Issus is typically considered to be Altdorfer's masterpiece. Cuneo states that the painting is usually "considered in splendid isolation from its fifteen other companion pieces, based on the assumption that it either metonymically stands in for the entire cycle, or that its perceived aesthetic predominance merits exclusive focus." German writer Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) was one of many who saw the painting in the Louvre and marvelled, calling it a "small painted Iliad". Reinhart Koselleck comments that Altdorfer's depiction of the thousands of soldiers was executed with "a mastery previously unknown", and Kathleen Davis describes the painting as "epochal in every sense".

File:Battle of Issus - initial deployment.svg

alt=A painting showing an elaborate and fanciful palace set in a landscape of forest and mountains. The forecourt of the palace is bustling with people. Outside the palace, near a fountain sits Susannah attended by handmaids who wash her feet and comb her hair. Two old courtiers spy on her from the dense undergrowth.

Detail of the fictitious mountain in the painting's centre

Category:Collection of the Alte Pinakothek

Detail of Alexander the Great from the [[Alexander Mosaic

commons:File:Altdorfer, Albrecht - Donaulandschaft mit Schloß Wörth.jpg

alt=A panel from an altarpiece by Grünewald. On the right, the Virgin Mary gazes at the Christ Child while above her, in a sky blazing with light, God is seated on a throne surrounded by the Hosts of Heaven. To the left an orchestra of cherubim plays in a Gothic loggia.

The initial dispositions at the Battle of Issus. The Pinarus River separates the belligerents, and Issus is {{convert

alt=A military diagram. A river runs through the lower-left diagonal. On one side are the Persians, with the Orientals and Greek mercenaries, and on the other are the Macedonians, with Alexander and Parmenion. The gradient of the nearby mountains generally decreases from the top right, till the shores of the gulf in the bottom left.

alt=A large mosaic depicting an array of soldiers on horseback doing battle. Parts of it have been damaged or lost to time.

alt=Small figures of women on the battlefield, all with long red hair and all wearing feathered toques

''Susannah and the Elders'' (1526), the only other painting by Altdorfer in the [[Alte Pinakothek

Detail of soldiers from both armies. Reinhart Koselleck comments that the Persians resemble the 16th-century Turks "from their feet to their turbans."

Matthias Grünewald's ''The Virgin and Child with the Heavenly Host'' (c. 1515)

Alexander the Great#Death and succession

alt=A miniature painting showing four brightly clothed men carrying a large banner which is painted with a complex battle scene

alt=An island, and a cityscape featuring church towers

mi}} to the north. Cavalry is concentrated on the shores of the Gulf of İskenderun (or Gulf of Issus) on both sides. Alexander devotes himself to a right approach with his Companion cavalry, having unseated the Persian foothill defence.

alt=A steep mountain, upon which are built fortifications

alt= A painting of St George slaying the dragon set in a dense forest in which the figures are dwarfed by the trees. A distant landscape is seen through a break.

Detail of the oversized island of Cyprus and what is probably the city of Tarsus

A miniature from ''Triumphal Procession'' (1512–1516)

File:Horatius Cocles Stopping King Porsenna's Army outside Rome (Ludwig Refinger) - Nationalmuseum - 17244.tif

alt=A blazing sun above blue-tinged mountains and water

The Alexander Mosaic, as seen in the Naples National Archaeological Museum

Category:Paintings by Albrecht Altdorfer

List of landscapes by Albrecht Altdorfer


Wheatfield with Crows

Prompt: Focus on Wheatfield with Crows and explain the abstract.

Wheatfield with Crows (Dutch: Korenveld met kraaien) is a July 1890 painting by Vincent van Gogh. It has been cited by several critics as one of his greatest works.It is commonly stated that this was van Gogh's final painting. This association was popularized by Vincente Minnelli’s 1956 biopic Lust for Life, which depicts van Gogh painting it immediately before shooting himself. His final painting in actuality was Tree Roots. The evidence of his letters suggests that Wheatfield with Crows was completed around 10 July and predates such paintings as Auvers Town Hall on 14 July 1890 and Daubigny's Garden. Moreover, Jan Hulsker has written that a painting of harvested wheat, Field with Stacks of Wheat (F771), must be a later painting.

File:Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds - VGM F778.jpg

Double-squares and Squares#Van Gogh.27s Double-square canvases

Category:Paintings of Auvers-sur-Oise by Vincent van Gogh

Category:Collection of the Van Gogh Museum


Wheatfield with Crows

Prompt: Explain the abstract of this artwork, Wheatfield with Crows.

Wheatfield with Crows (Dutch: Korenveld met kraaien) is a July 1890 painting by Vincent van Gogh. It has been cited by several critics as one of his greatest works.It is commonly stated that this was van Gogh's final painting. This association was popularized by Vincente Minnelli’s 1956 biopic Lust for Life, which depicts van Gogh painting it immediately before shooting himself. His final painting in actuality was Tree Roots. The evidence of his letters suggests that Wheatfield with Crows was completed around 10 July and predates such paintings as Auvers Town Hall on 14 July 1890 and Daubigny's Garden. Moreover, Jan Hulsker has written that a painting of harvested wheat, Field with Stacks of Wheat (F771), must be a later painting.

File:Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds - VGM F778.jpg

Double-squares and Squares#Van Gogh.27s Double-square canvases

Category:Paintings of Auvers-sur-Oise by Vincent van Gogh

Category:Collection of the Van Gogh Museum


Wheatfield with Crows

Prompt: How does Wheatfield with Crows explain its abstract?

Wheatfield with Crows (Dutch: Korenveld met kraaien) is a July 1890 painting by Vincent van Gogh. It has been cited by several critics as one of his greatest works.It is commonly stated that this was van Gogh's final painting. This association was popularized by Vincente Minnelli’s 1956 biopic Lust for Life, which depicts van Gogh painting it immediately before shooting himself. His final painting in actuality was Tree Roots. The evidence of his letters suggests that Wheatfield with Crows was completed around 10 July and predates such paintings as Auvers Town Hall on 14 July 1890 and Daubigny's Garden. Moreover, Jan Hulsker has written that a painting of harvested wheat, Field with Stacks of Wheat (F771), must be a later painting.

File:Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds - VGM F778.jpg

Double-squares and Squares#Van Gogh.27s Double-square canvases

Category:Paintings of Auvers-sur-Oise by Vincent van Gogh

Category:Collection of the Van Gogh Museum


Wheatfield with Crows

Prompt: In Wheatfield with Crows, how is the abstract discussed?

Wheatfield with Crows (Dutch: Korenveld met kraaien) is a July 1890 painting by Vincent van Gogh. It has been cited by several critics as one of his greatest works.It is commonly stated that this was van Gogh's final painting. This association was popularized by Vincente Minnelli’s 1956 biopic Lust for Life, which depicts van Gogh painting it immediately before shooting himself. His final painting in actuality was Tree Roots. The evidence of his letters suggests that Wheatfield with Crows was completed around 10 July and predates such paintings as Auvers Town Hall on 14 July 1890 and Daubigny's Garden. Moreover, Jan Hulsker has written that a painting of harvested wheat, Field with Stacks of Wheat (F771), must be a later painting.

File:Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds - VGM F778.jpg

Double-squares and Squares#Van Gogh.27s Double-square canvases

Category:Paintings of Auvers-sur-Oise by Vincent van Gogh

Category:Collection of the Van Gogh Museum


Wheatfield with Crows

Prompt: Focus on Wheatfield with Crows and explain the Provenance.

The Van Gogh Museum's Wheatfield with Crows was painted in July 1890, in the last weeks of van Gogh's life. Many have claimed it as his last painting, while it is likely that Tree Roots was his final painting.Wheat Field with Crows, made on a double-square canvas, depicts a dramatic, cloudy sky filled with crows over a wheat field. A sense of isolation is heightened by a central path leading nowhere and by the uncertain direction of flight of the crows. The windswept wheat field fills two-thirds of the canvas.  Jules Michelet, one of van Gogh's favorite authors, wrote of crows: "They interest themselves in everything, and observe everything.  The ancients, who lived far more completely than ourselves in and with nature, found it no small profit to follow, in a hundred obscure things where human experience as yet affords no light, the directions of so prudent and sage a bird." Kathleen Erickson finds the painting as expressing both sorrow and a sense of his life coming to an end. The crows are used by van Gogh as a symbol of death and rebirth, or of resurrection. The road, in contrasting colors of red and green, is said by Erickson to be a metaphor for a sermon he gave based on Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress where the pilgrim is sorrowful that the road is so long, yet rejoices because the Eternal City waits at the journey's end.About 10 July 1890 van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo and his wife Jo Bonger, saying that he had painted another three large canvases at Auvers since visiting them in Paris on 6 July. Two of these are described as  immense stretches of wheatfields under turbulent skies, thought to be Wheatfield under Clouded Sky and Wheatfield with Crows, and the third is Daubigny's Garden. He wrote that he had made a point of expressing sadness, later adding "extreme loneliness" (de la solitude extrême), but also says he believes the canvases show what he considers healthy and fortifying about the countryside (and adds that he intended to take them to Paris as soon as possible).Walther and Metzger, in Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings, state that "There is nothing in van Gogh's words to support a simplistic interpretation along the lines of artistic angst and despair – nor is there any evidence for the widely-held belief that it was this painting that van Gogh had on his easel at the time he killed himself." They refer to a June 1880 letter of van Gogh's, in which he compared himself to a bird in a cage, and remark: "The crows in the painting, in other words, were an altogether personal symbol closely associated with van Gogh's own life".These painting are all examples of van Gogh's elongated double-square canvases, used exclusively by him in the last few weeks of his life, in June and July 1890.The painting is held in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, as is Wheatfield under Clouded Sky.Wheatfield with Crows was stolen and quickly recovered in 1991 along with 19 other van Gogh paintings; the painting was "severely damaged" during the heist.The Indonesian composer Ananda Sukarlan composed a piece with the same title for flute and piano inspired by this and three other paintings, under a cycle titled "The Springs of Vincent".

File:Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds - VGM F778.jpg

Double-squares and Squares#Van Gogh.27s Double-square canvases

Category:Paintings of Auvers-sur-Oise by Vincent van Gogh

Category:Collection of the Van Gogh Museum


Wheatfield with Crows

Prompt: Explain the Provenance of this artwork, Wheatfield with Crows.

The Van Gogh Museum's Wheatfield with Crows was painted in July 1890, in the last weeks of van Gogh's life. Many have claimed it as his last painting, while it is likely that Tree Roots was his final painting.Wheat Field with Crows, made on a double-square canvas, depicts a dramatic, cloudy sky filled with crows over a wheat field. A sense of isolation is heightened by a central path leading nowhere and by the uncertain direction of flight of the crows. The windswept wheat field fills two-thirds of the canvas.  Jules Michelet, one of van Gogh's favorite authors, wrote of crows: "They interest themselves in everything, and observe everything.  The ancients, who lived far more completely than ourselves in and with nature, found it no small profit to follow, in a hundred obscure things where human experience as yet affords no light, the directions of so prudent and sage a bird." Kathleen Erickson finds the painting as expressing both sorrow and a sense of his life coming to an end. The crows are used by van Gogh as a symbol of death and rebirth, or of resurrection. The road, in contrasting colors of red and green, is said by Erickson to be a metaphor for a sermon he gave based on Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress where the pilgrim is sorrowful that the road is so long, yet rejoices because the Eternal City waits at the journey's end.About 10 July 1890 van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo and his wife Jo Bonger, saying that he had painted another three large canvases at Auvers since visiting them in Paris on 6 July. Two of these are described as  immense stretches of wheatfields under turbulent skies, thought to be Wheatfield under Clouded Sky and Wheatfield with Crows, and the third is Daubigny's Garden. He wrote that he had made a point of expressing sadness, later adding "extreme loneliness" (de la solitude extrême), but also says he believes the canvases show what he considers healthy and fortifying about the countryside (and adds that he intended to take them to Paris as soon as possible).Walther and Metzger, in Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings, state that "There is nothing in van Gogh's words to support a simplistic interpretation along the lines of artistic angst and despair – nor is there any evidence for the widely-held belief that it was this painting that van Gogh had on his easel at the time he killed himself." They refer to a June 1880 letter of van Gogh's, in which he compared himself to a bird in a cage, and remark: "The crows in the painting, in other words, were an altogether personal symbol closely associated with van Gogh's own life".These painting are all examples of van Gogh's elongated double-square canvases, used exclusively by him in the last few weeks of his life, in June and July 1890.The painting is held in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, as is Wheatfield under Clouded Sky.Wheatfield with Crows was stolen and quickly recovered in 1991 along with 19 other van Gogh paintings; the painting was "severely damaged" during the heist.The Indonesian composer Ananda Sukarlan composed a piece with the same title for flute and piano inspired by this and three other paintings, under a cycle titled "The Springs of Vincent".

File:Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds - VGM F778.jpg

Double-squares and Squares#Van Gogh.27s Double-square canvases

Category:Paintings of Auvers-sur-Oise by Vincent van Gogh

Category:Collection of the Van Gogh Museum


Wheatfield with Crows

Prompt: How does Wheatfield with Crows explain its Provenance?

The Van Gogh Museum's Wheatfield with Crows was painted in July 1890, in the last weeks of van Gogh's life. Many have claimed it as his last painting, while it is likely that Tree Roots was his final painting.Wheat Field with Crows, made on a double-square canvas, depicts a dramatic, cloudy sky filled with crows over a wheat field. A sense of isolation is heightened by a central path leading nowhere and by the uncertain direction of flight of the crows. The windswept wheat field fills two-thirds of the canvas.  Jules Michelet, one of van Gogh's favorite authors, wrote of crows: "They interest themselves in everything, and observe everything.  The ancients, who lived far more completely than ourselves in and with nature, found it no small profit to follow, in a hundred obscure things where human experience as yet affords no light, the directions of so prudent and sage a bird." Kathleen Erickson finds the painting as expressing both sorrow and a sense of his life coming to an end. The crows are used by van Gogh as a symbol of death and rebirth, or of resurrection. The road, in contrasting colors of red and green, is said by Erickson to be a metaphor for a sermon he gave based on Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress where the pilgrim is sorrowful that the road is so long, yet rejoices because the Eternal City waits at the journey's end.About 10 July 1890 van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo and his wife Jo Bonger, saying that he had painted another three large canvases at Auvers since visiting them in Paris on 6 July. Two of these are described as  immense stretches of wheatfields under turbulent skies, thought to be Wheatfield under Clouded Sky and Wheatfield with Crows, and the third is Daubigny's Garden. He wrote that he had made a point of expressing sadness, later adding "extreme loneliness" (de la solitude extrême), but also says he believes the canvases show what he considers healthy and fortifying about the countryside (and adds that he intended to take them to Paris as soon as possible).Walther and Metzger, in Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings, state that "There is nothing in van Gogh's words to support a simplistic interpretation along the lines of artistic angst and despair – nor is there any evidence for the widely-held belief that it was this painting that van Gogh had on his easel at the time he killed himself." They refer to a June 1880 letter of van Gogh's, in which he compared himself to a bird in a cage, and remark: "The crows in the painting, in other words, were an altogether personal symbol closely associated with van Gogh's own life".These painting are all examples of van Gogh's elongated double-square canvases, used exclusively by him in the last few weeks of his life, in June and July 1890.The painting is held in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, as is Wheatfield under Clouded Sky.Wheatfield with Crows was stolen and quickly recovered in 1991 along with 19 other van Gogh paintings; the painting was "severely damaged" during the heist.The Indonesian composer Ananda Sukarlan composed a piece with the same title for flute and piano inspired by this and three other paintings, under a cycle titled "The Springs of Vincent".

File:Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds - VGM F778.jpg

Double-squares and Squares#Van Gogh.27s Double-square canvases

Category:Paintings of Auvers-sur-Oise by Vincent van Gogh

Category:Collection of the Van Gogh Museum


Wheatfield with Crows

Prompt: In Wheatfield with Crows, how is the Provenance discussed?

The Van Gogh Museum's Wheatfield with Crows was painted in July 1890, in the last weeks of van Gogh's life. Many have claimed it as his last painting, while it is likely that Tree Roots was his final painting.Wheat Field with Crows, made on a double-square canvas, depicts a dramatic, cloudy sky filled with crows over a wheat field. A sense of isolation is heightened by a central path leading nowhere and by the uncertain direction of flight of the crows. The windswept wheat field fills two-thirds of the canvas.  Jules Michelet, one of van Gogh's favorite authors, wrote of crows: "They interest themselves in everything, and observe everything.  The ancients, who lived far more completely than ourselves in and with nature, found it no small profit to follow, in a hundred obscure things where human experience as yet affords no light, the directions of so prudent and sage a bird." Kathleen Erickson finds the painting as expressing both sorrow and a sense of his life coming to an end. The crows are used by van Gogh as a symbol of death and rebirth, or of resurrection. The road, in contrasting colors of red and green, is said by Erickson to be a metaphor for a sermon he gave based on Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress where the pilgrim is sorrowful that the road is so long, yet rejoices because the Eternal City waits at the journey's end.About 10 July 1890 van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo and his wife Jo Bonger, saying that he had painted another three large canvases at Auvers since visiting them in Paris on 6 July. Two of these are described as  immense stretches of wheatfields under turbulent skies, thought to be Wheatfield under Clouded Sky and Wheatfield with Crows, and the third is Daubigny's Garden. He wrote that he had made a point of expressing sadness, later adding "extreme loneliness" (de la solitude extrême), but also says he believes the canvases show what he considers healthy and fortifying about the countryside (and adds that he intended to take them to Paris as soon as possible).Walther and Metzger, in Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings, state that "There is nothing in van Gogh's words to support a simplistic interpretation along the lines of artistic angst and despair – nor is there any evidence for the widely-held belief that it was this painting that van Gogh had on his easel at the time he killed himself." They refer to a June 1880 letter of van Gogh's, in which he compared himself to a bird in a cage, and remark: "The crows in the painting, in other words, were an altogether personal symbol closely associated with van Gogh's own life".These painting are all examples of van Gogh's elongated double-square canvases, used exclusively by him in the last few weeks of his life, in June and July 1890.The painting is held in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, as is Wheatfield under Clouded Sky.Wheatfield with Crows was stolen and quickly recovered in 1991 along with 19 other van Gogh paintings; the painting was "severely damaged" during the heist.The Indonesian composer Ananda Sukarlan composed a piece with the same title for flute and piano inspired by this and three other paintings, under a cycle titled "The Springs of Vincent".

File:Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds - VGM F778.jpg

Double-squares and Squares#Van Gogh.27s Double-square canvases

Category:Paintings of Auvers-sur-Oise by Vincent van Gogh

Category:Collection of the Van Gogh Museum


Wikipedia Monument

Prompt: Focus on Wikipedia Monument and explain the abstract.

The Wikipedia Monument (Polish: Pomnik Wikipedii), located in Słubice, Poland, is a statue designed by Armenian sculptor Mihran Hakobyan honoring Wikipedia contributors. It was unveiled in Frankfurt Square (Plac Frankfurcki) on 22 October 2014 in a ceremony that included representatives from both local Wikimedia chapters and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Category:Monuments and memorials in Poland

File:Wikipedia sculpture Poland Slubice.jpg

Category:Articles containing video clips

Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia


Wikipedia Monument

Prompt: Explain the abstract of this artwork, Wikipedia Monument.

The Wikipedia Monument (Polish: Pomnik Wikipedii), located in Słubice, Poland, is a statue designed by Armenian sculptor Mihran Hakobyan honoring Wikipedia contributors. It was unveiled in Frankfurt Square (Plac Frankfurcki) on 22 October 2014 in a ceremony that included representatives from both local Wikimedia chapters and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Category:Monuments and memorials in Poland

File:Wikipedia sculpture Poland Slubice.jpg

Category:Articles containing video clips

Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia


Wikipedia Monument

Prompt: How does Wikipedia Monument explain its abstract?

The Wikipedia Monument (Polish: Pomnik Wikipedii), located in Słubice, Poland, is a statue designed by Armenian sculptor Mihran Hakobyan honoring Wikipedia contributors. It was unveiled in Frankfurt Square (Plac Frankfurcki) on 22 October 2014 in a ceremony that included representatives from both local Wikimedia chapters and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Category:Monuments and memorials in Poland

File:Wikipedia sculpture Poland Slubice.jpg

Category:Articles containing video clips

Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia


Wikipedia Monument

Prompt: In Wikipedia Monument, how is the abstract discussed?

The Wikipedia Monument (Polish: Pomnik Wikipedii), located in Słubice, Poland, is a statue designed by Armenian sculptor Mihran Hakobyan honoring Wikipedia contributors. It was unveiled in Frankfurt Square (Plac Frankfurcki) on 22 October 2014 in a ceremony that included representatives from both local Wikimedia chapters and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Category:Monuments and memorials in Poland

File:Wikipedia sculpture Poland Slubice.jpg

Category:Articles containing video clips

Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia


Wikipedia Monument

Prompt: Focus on Wikipedia Monument and explain the Description.

The monument depicts four nude figures holding aloft a globe based on the Wikipedia logo, reaching over two metres (6 ft 7 in) up. The fiber-and-resin statue was designed by Armenian-born artist Mihran Hakobyan, who graduated from Collegium Polonicum. It cost about 50,000 złotys (approximately $13,500; €11,700) and was funded by Słubice regional authorities. The monument has the following inscription:With this monument the citizens of Słubice would like to pay homage to thousands of anonymous editors all over the world, who have contributed voluntarily to the creation of Wikipedia, the greatest project co-created by people regardless of political, religious or cultural borders. In the year this monument is unveiled Wikipedia is available in more than 280 languages and contains about 30 million articles. The benefactors behind this monument feel certain that with Wikipedia as one of its pillars the knowledge society will be able to contribute to the sustainable development of our civilization, social justice and peace among nations.

Category:Monuments and memorials in Poland

File:Wikipedia sculpture Poland Slubice.jpg

Category:Articles containing video clips

Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia


Wikipedia Monument

Prompt: Explain the Description of this artwork, Wikipedia Monument.

The monument depicts four nude figures holding aloft a globe based on the Wikipedia logo, reaching over two metres (6 ft 7 in) up. The fiber-and-resin statue was designed by Armenian-born artist Mihran Hakobyan, who graduated from Collegium Polonicum. It cost about 50,000 złotys (approximately $13,500; €11,700) and was funded by Słubice regional authorities. The monument has the following inscription:With this monument the citizens of Słubice would like to pay homage to thousands of anonymous editors all over the world, who have contributed voluntarily to the creation of Wikipedia, the greatest project co-created by people regardless of political, religious or cultural borders. In the year this monument is unveiled Wikipedia is available in more than 280 languages and contains about 30 million articles. The benefactors behind this monument feel certain that with Wikipedia as one of its pillars the knowledge society will be able to contribute to the sustainable development of our civilization, social justice and peace among nations.

Category:Monuments and memorials in Poland

File:Wikipedia sculpture Poland Slubice.jpg

Category:Articles containing video clips

Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia


Wikipedia Monument

Prompt: How does Wikipedia Monument explain its Description?

The monument depicts four nude figures holding aloft a globe based on the Wikipedia logo, reaching over two metres (6 ft 7 in) up. The fiber-and-resin statue was designed by Armenian-born artist Mihran Hakobyan, who graduated from Collegium Polonicum. It cost about 50,000 złotys (approximately $13,500; €11,700) and was funded by Słubice regional authorities. The monument has the following inscription:With this monument the citizens of Słubice would like to pay homage to thousands of anonymous editors all over the world, who have contributed voluntarily to the creation of Wikipedia, the greatest project co-created by people regardless of political, religious or cultural borders. In the year this monument is unveiled Wikipedia is available in more than 280 languages and contains about 30 million articles. The benefactors behind this monument feel certain that with Wikipedia as one of its pillars the knowledge society will be able to contribute to the sustainable development of our civilization, social justice and peace among nations.

Category:Monuments and memorials in Poland

File:Wikipedia sculpture Poland Slubice.jpg

Category:Articles containing video clips

Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia