Italian School; c. 1700.

Italian School; c. 1700.
“The Family of Darius Before Alexander the Great”
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Fitted with a 19th-century frame.
Measurements: 65 x 98 cm; 86 x 128 cm (frame).
This work follows the model established by the artist Charles Le Brun in 1660, when he painted a work on the same theme, which is now housed at the Palace of Versailles. Le Brun’s work has the same composition; however, in this particular case, the landscape format allows for a greater number of figures to be included. The central area features the same composition as the aforementioned painting, with Darius’s mother kneeling on the ground before the standing figures of Alexander and Hephaestion. Several figures forming a large retinue take shelter under the canvas of a tent, just as in Le Brun’s painting. But in this particular instance, the artist has taken some artistic liberty by depicting a group of soldiers positioned on the right side of the painting. The scene depicts the moment when, after the Battle of Issus, Alexander, together with his friend Hephaestion, decided to visit the family of Darius, who had been defeated. Because of Alexander’s youth, Darius’s mother, confused, knelt before Hephaestion.
Charles Le Brun was a French painter and an important art theorist. He trained in Simon Vouet’s studio as a child and began receiving commissions from Cardinal Richelieu at the age of fifteen. Between 1642 and 1646, he was in Rome, where he encountered the works of Raphael, Guido Reni, the Bolognese school, and others, and where he also studied under Poussin. He returned to Paris and continued his significant body of work, reaching his stylistic maturity around the middle of the century (with an elegant, classicist style of painting). He was ennobled by Louis XIV, who appointed him Premier Peintre du Roi in 1664.