1796
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Alexander at the Tomb of Cyrus the Great is a 1796 oil by Pierre Henri, a French Romanticism work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
You see a landscape with Alexander the Great standing in front of a tomb. The tomb belongs to Cyrus the Great, who founded the Persian Empire. This painting is interesting because it shows the tomb has been desecrated. The artist used this scene to convey a moral message. To learn more about the way light and dark are used in this painting, look up the technique of chiaroscuro.
This landscape and its companion piece, Mount Athos Carved as a Monument to Alexander the Great , reflect the late-18th-century enthusiasm for the antique, as well as the cult of sensibility that made the tomb in a landscape a favored subject for art in this period. Here Alexander, who overthrew the Persian Empire, arrives at the tomb of its founder, Cyrus the Great (590/580–c. 529 B.C.), only to find that it has been desecrated. In choosing the subjects of this pair of moralizing landscapes, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes was doubtless suggesting the transitory nature of empire and of life…
James Hunt (died 1801), London, offered for sale, Christie’s, London, February 5, 1802, lot 61, bought in [according to Maria Wilson of Christie’s, letter of January 9, 1996, to Larry Feinberg, in curatorial files]; Hunt family, London. Reverend George Augustus Frederick Hart (died 1872), M. A., Vicar of Arundel, Tower House, Arundel, Sussex; by descent to his niece Catherine (Mrs. John Lord); sold at Tower House, Arundel, Sotheby’s, May 20–21, 1873, lot 131, to G. Fry for £25 [British Museum annot. cat.]. Alderman Philip Spowart (died 1945), Berwick-upon-Tweed, from c. 1937 [according to…
Paris, Musée du Louvre, Egyptomania: L’Egypte dans l’art occidental, 1730–1930, January 20–April 18, 1994, cat. 86; Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, June 17–September 18, 1994; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, October 16, 1994–January 29, 1995.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (6 December 1750 – 16 February 1819) was a French painter. A neoclassicist artist, he was influential in elevating the status of En plein air (open-air painting).
See the richer artist pageYour cart is empty
Explore artworks →
