Albrect Altdorfer’s atypical Battle of Issus (or of Alexander) of 1529 is commissioned by William IV, Duke of Bavaria as part of a series of eight historical battle scenes destined to hang in the Residenz in Munich.
A masterpiece of large spatial organization, the panoramic painting exemplifies the forty-eight-year-old artist’s interest in magic, ruins, fantastic landscape, and mysterious light.
Altdorfer’s use of sophisticated atmospheric and aerial perspective as well as naturalistic detail produces an image that ultimately evokes a sense of the primordial powers that rule the universe.
His depiction of the moment in 333 BCE when Alexander the Great routed Darius III for supremacy in Asia Minor is vast in ambition, sweeping in scope, vivid in imagery, rich in symbols, and obviously heroic.
In the painting, a swarming cast of thousands of soldiers surround the central action: Alexander on his white steed, leading two rows of charging cavalrymen, dashes after a fleeing Darius, who looks anxiously over his shoulder from a chariot.
The opposing armies are distinguished by the colors of their uniforms: Darius' army in red and Alexander's in blue.
The upper half of The Battle of Alexander expands with unreal rapidity into an arcing panorama comprehending vast coiling tracts of globe and sky.
The victory also lies on the planar surface; The sun outshone the moon just as the Imperial and allied army successfully repel the Turks.
By making the mass number of soldiers blend within the landscape/painting, it shows that he believes that the usage and depiction of landscape is just as significant as a historical event, such as a war.
He had renounced the office of Mayor of Regensburg to accept the commission.
Few of his other paintings resemble this apocalyptic scene of two huge armies dominated by an extravagant landscape seen from a very high viewpoint, which looks south over the whole Mediterranean from modern Turkey to include the island of Cyprus and the mouths of the Nile and the Red Sea (behind the isthmus to the left) on the other side.
However his style here is a development of that of a number of miniatures of battle-scenes he had done much earlier for Maximilian I in his illuminated manuscript Triumphal Procession in 1512-14.
It is thought to be the earliest painting to show the curvature of the Earth from a great height.
