Reinventing Alexander

In this book Claudia Daniotti provides the first comprehensive study of the representation of Alexander the Great in Renaissance Italian art, exploring a fundamental turning point in the tradition: the transition from the medieval imagery of Alexander as a legendary, fairy-tale hero to the new historically grounded portrait of him as an example of moral virtue and military prowess.

During the Middle Ages, Alexander was turned into a fabled creature and fearless explorer, whose Flight to Heaven and other marvellous adventures were tirelessly recounted and illustrated, enjoying huge popularity. With the humanist recovery of the ancient historical texts and the changing taste and expectations of the wider, wealthier and more diverse public of the courts and cities of the Italian peninsula, the fabulous aura that had surrounded Alexander for centuries evaporated. He was recast as the moral exemplum and valorous military commander spoken of by the newly available ancient historians, and became the protagonist of an unprecedently vast iconographic repertoire established in the course of the sixteenth century.

By discussing a body of artworks from 1160s to 1560s spanning several media (from illuminated manuscripts and frescoes to sculptural reliefs, wedding chests and tapestries) and researching this material in constant dialogue with the literary tradition, this book offers a reassessment of the whole visual tradition of Alexander in Renaissance Italy, making sense of a figurative repertoire often perceived as fragmentary and disparate, and casting new light on an overall still neglected chapter in the tradition of the myth of Alexander.