Lot Essay
Though this painting has come to be seen as depicting Alexander the Great and his Captains recovering the dying Persian Emperor Darius after the Battle of Issus the iconography of the scene does not support this idea, since Darius, last Achaemenid King of Kings of Persia, did not die in battle. Instead, he was murdered in the back of an ox-cart by two of his own generals, Bessus and Nabarzanes, who had turned against him for his inability to defeat Alexander.
It is possible that the scene depicted is instead the death of Antigonus I Monophthalmus, the Macedonian ruler of large parts of Asia, at the Battle of Ipsus. Antigonus was one of the Diadochos, the rival generals, families, and friends of Alexander the Great who fought for control over his empire after his death in 323 BC. For a while he was the most powerful of these warring leaders, ruling over an area that covered Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Phoenicia and northern Mesopotamia. However, Cassander, Seleucus, Ptolemy and Lysimachus formed a coalition against him, which resulted in his ultimate defeat and death at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC.
Frederick van Valckenborch came from the Valckenborch dynasty of artists, his father was Marten van Valckenborch, his brother Gillis van Valckenborch and his uncle Lucas van Valckenborch l. Both Martin and Lucas were originally from Leuven, but for political or religious reasons, left the Spanish-occupied southern Netherlands and settled in the more tolerant German imperial city of Frankfurt-am-Main. Frederik would have likely received his training from his father in Antwerp before following the older generation’s example and moving to Frankfurt and later Nuremberg.