Portraits of Alexander the Great

The visual devices used by Tony Blair and George Bush to get themselves elected and maintain power, come not from modern times, but a world that is thousands of years old. How Art Made the World ventures back to the creation of Stonehenge and the reign of Alexander the Great to reveal how imagery became an indispensable weapon in every leader's political armoury.

This episode explores how art can be used as a persuasion device by those in power and when did we learn to use images, to create a powerful icon or symbol, this way?

The use of art as a tool for those in power, started at different times, in different cultures. Near Stonehenge the grave of the Amesbury Archer was discovered in 2002, the grave was different to those previously found near the site, as this one was not Roman, but much earlier, dating to when the first sarsen stones were erected. What made him interesting were his gold hair tresses, possibly the oldest dated gold objects in Britain, and the fact that he was a foreigner, from the region that is now Germany / Switzerland. The archer had completed an epic journey for the time, and the treasures in his grave show a man of status. Art for personal adornment, like these hair clasps, elevated him above his peers.

As time progressed, art became a political tool, kings competed for more dazzling adornments. As kingdoms got bigger the kings had to overcome communication issues. Darius the Great of Persia, ruled over 20 nations from Persepolis. As very few people could read, Darius had stone reliefs created that combined styles from all over the empire, the carvings showed each nation bring tributes to their king. This showed respect, and the carvings communicated that Darius admired and respected his people. Darius created a symbol for himself, that of the archer, symbolic to Persians of leadership and wisdom, central to the concept of kingship. Darius embossed this symbol on gold coins, which became the currency to trade within the empire.

Darius’ conqueror, Alexander the Great, took this concept further. From an early age, Alexander’s image was being made for him. In his fathers tomb, an Ivory head recognisable as Alexander’s was found, showing that his image had been made for him in advance of him becoming king. In Pompeii, a copy of an original Macedonian painting, shows Alexander the Great, fearless, fixated on his enemy and leading from the front. He is in the midst of battle with king Darius, shown fearful and panicking. Where Darius had used a symbol to communicate his power, Alexander used his face. On defeating the Persians, Alexander melted down all their coins replacing them with coins bearing his head. Tests have shown that people are more influenced by the image of the head and this technique has endured 2500 years and still used today.

This artistic power can be used for sinister purposes, to persuade us to see things a certain way or even deceive us. The earliest known use of this dates back to the Romans. In 40BC Rome was in crisis, the city state was split between royalists and republicans. You could tell people’s political allegiance by how they dressed. Octavian (Augustus) understood the power of art and used it to his advantage. He needed to persuade his opponents ,and used artists to create a less threatening image, one that won over the republicans. Although the image showed him as a powerful general, it didn’t show any military arms, and his gestures were more about humility than power. His armour breast plates show him accepting surrender of the Parthian Empire, with the gods looking on approvingly. The statue offered reassurance, but it was all a lie. While he portrayed himself as a peace maker, he was getting rid of the opposition; while he was preaching humility, he lived like corrupt royalty and while pretending to hand power to the people he reinstated himself as a king.

The leaders of past used paint and marble, today we use digital manipulation. But as humans we still remain vulnerable to the persuasive power of art.

ABSTRACT: Considering the controversial image of Alexander the Great that we receive via the texts of antiquity, it should not surprise that his representation in the movies be also very much varied and complex. The most ancient and least known of the films about him is Sikandar (1941, India) by Sohrab Modi, an interesting work not only because the characters are portrayed from the perspective of the defeated, but by the meaningful presence of Aristotle and Roxane. Later on, his story was screened in Alexander the Great (1956), by Robert Rossen, and Alexander (2004) by Oliver Stone. My objective in this article is to analyze some aspects of these three films comparatively, focusing on the images of Aristotle, in order to understand how the presence of this philosopher is portrayed and aligned to the construction of the Macedonian king´s image
KEYWORDS: Alexander; Aristotle; Reception Studies; Cinema.
https://revista.classica.org.br/classica/issue/view/47/showToc

""En Filipo II y el Arte de la Guerra tendremos la oportunidad de conocer en profundidad a uno de los más grandes reyes de la antigua Macedonia. Gracias a su habilidad como estratega, diplomático, político y soldado, heredó un reino pobre, débil y acosado por innumerables enemigos y lo transformó en el más poderoso de toda Grecia.

A lo largo de sus páginas podremos conocer la historia del reino Macedonio, desde sus orígenes míticos hasta la formación de un imperio, de la mano del que, a la postre, se convertiría en el padre del mítico Alejandro Magno y en el forjador de un nuevo ejército que cambiaria el devenir de la guerra en la Antigüedad. Filipo II fue el creador de la falange macedonia, formación que se demostraría como inigualable en el campo de batalla y que reportaría incontables victorias sobre poderosos enemigos, como los ilirios, los tesalios, los tracios, los beocios o los atenienses. Pero no sólo eso, logró integrar en el campo de batalla a la infantería y a la caballería para emplearlos en nuevas formaciones tácticas: armó a sus soldados con las míticas sarissas y apreció como pocos las posibilidades militares que la maquinaria de guerra podía proporcionarle, siendo el mecenas de numerosos avances en este campo. Soñó con conquistar el Imperio persa, cuando ya había logrado lo que nadie antes fue capaz: el control de Grecia.

Sólo la muerte le arrebató esa hazaña, pero sentó las bases de lo que más tarde conseguiría su propio hijo. Su figura levantó tanto odios como pasiones; se le conocía como mujeriego y bebedor, pero también por su habilidad para la oratoria, por sus astucia, determinación y valor. Siempre luchó en primera línea junto a sus soldados y nunca permitió que éstos le llamaran rey, sino solo "General".

Macedonians have emerged from the substratum of prehistoric tribes belonging to the huge family of Pelasgians, Aeols/Boreans  and Hyperboreans (Anti, Brygii, Danuni, Kiti, Hittiti, Lapiti, Macedoni, Minyi, Misiani, Mosiniki, Pelasgi, Pelagoni, Paioni, Tiroi, Tyrseni, etc.) that lived and contributed the creation of archetypical cultures of the second millennium BCE in the central regions of Macedonian Peninsula and Asia Minor.  During their migrations these ancestral Aryan-Macedonic tribes brought with them their culture and contributed to the creation of the civilization centers in antiquity,  especially in the region of lower Danube and further toward Ukraine/Russia (as 'Aryans') and in Central Europe (as 'Veneti' and/or 'Gaul'). 
As a result of the progressive expansion of the early Macedonians during the archaic period all the other regional tribes fused together into a larger union of Macedonians. At the beginning the Orestians (modern Mkd. Gorani; Eng. 'highlanders', mountainers)  from Argo (today Kostur region, Aegean Macedonia) in western Lower Macedonia, together with other neighboring Macedonic tribes living in Eordaia, Elimeia (Kožani and Grevena), northern Timfaia (Hasia), Lynkestia, Desaretia (Lerin-Prespa-Ohrid region), Elimiotia, Pelagonia and Paionia (in Upper Macedonia) began to form the Macedonian state, the first entity of that kind and extent on the European soil.

The catalogue of the exhibition  is devoted to Alexander the Great, his  Eastern campaign and its consequences on East and West. More than 350 objects from the collections of the State Hermitage museum  spanning the period more than 2 500 years, from the 5 century BC to the 19 сentury. The show tells us the story about meeting of  great civilizations  - Hellenistic states, ancient Oriental empires, the world of nomads. Stepping on fareway land Alexander and his army brought with them Hellenistic culture. This influense spread  in huge territory - from Greece to India, Mongolia and China. Historic role of Alexander in shaping the fortune of the world, .The subject of the research is the historical role of Alexander Hellenism as global process of cultural interaction are the main topic of the exhibition Authors of the  articles  and entries of the catalogue are historians of Ancient East and those of Classical history, archeologists, linguists, historians of art of the State Hermitage Museum and Saint-Petersburg State University.

The publication is dedicated to a bronze vessel found in a robbed burial of the second half of the 4th century BCE in the Burial-mound no. 1 of the Chastye Kurgany group on the outskirts of Voronezh, excavated by the Voronezh Scientific Archive Commission in 1910. A vessel with a handle attachment in form of a mask under the edge on the outside and a gorgoneion-medallion at the bottom inside is a patera with a handle lost in antiquity. Such pateras with similarly shaped edges of the bowl and handles ending in a ram's head are known after a very small number of finds of the second half of the 4th century BCE almost all of which come from Macedonia and Thrace. Given the fact that lion's paws are depicted on the sides of the neck of the person shown on the mask, there is every reason for its attribution as the head of Herakles. A similar iconography is typical for vessel attachments from Northern Greece. The treatment of hair strands, in particular symmetrical curls over the forehead (anastole / ἀναστολή), resembles the hairstyle in the portraits of Alexander the Great and imitations of them. Taking into account this observation, it is hardly possible to date the patera from Chastye kurgans earlier than the last quarter of the 4th century BCE. In the North Pontic region, bronze vessels of this shape have not yet been known, despite the fact that the finds of bronze vessels of the Macedonian-Thracian circle of the 4th century BCE are represented both in Scythia and in the Bosporus. Taking into account the known finds of bronze vessels of the Macedonian types at the Elizavetinskoe fortified settlement and in its necropolis at the mouth of the Don, it can be assumed that such vessels could have reached the Middle Don in this way. At the same time, given the relative rarity of bronze (silver) pateras in Macedonia and Thrace in the second half of the 4th — early 3rd century BCE and their finds in very rich complexes, including in the royal burials in Vergina and Golyamata Kosmatka, one cannot exclude the possibility of a different way for the patera from Chastye Barrows. In Macedonia and Thrace, such pateras, together with the oinochoai, were part of the banquet sets, therefore, in this case, the patera, which, perhaps, originally had a pair (oinochoe) could also be a diplomatic gift. In any case, the patera from Chastye Burial-mounds fits into the circle of finds of Thracian horse-bridle pieces and Thracian and Macedonian toreutics found in the burials of the Scythian nobility in the Middle Don region.

“Alexander the Great and the monetary portraits of Indo-Greek Sovereigns”
The impact caused by the conquest of Alexander the Great of the easternmost satrapies of the Persian Empire (Bactria, Sogdiana, Paropamisadae, Arachosia, Seistan, Gandhara) between 329 and 326 BCE  continued throughout the centuries, leaving reminiscences of the past in the spirit and the behaviour of the various populations of the region, both Greek and Indian. The Greek rulers, aspiring to justify their legitimacy to reign over Indian territories, for their part increasingly attempted to identify themselves with Alexander the Great and with the Greek tradition that they tried to maintain for 300 years after his lightning passage. This is the message revealed to us by their monetary portraits.
Osmund Bopearachchi

The life of Alexander the Great marks a major turning point in history. His portrait lays the foundations for the following Royal hellenistic portraiture and in fact also the Roman imperial portraits. Few of the portraits made during his lifetime survive, reflected mainly in Roman copies. Alexander the Great employed the best artists of his time for his portraiture, such as the sculptor Lysipp and the painter Apelles. This article explores what we know the portrait features furing his lifetime and the early hellenistc period following his death. Alexander is consistently shown in a youthful idealized way, always beardless. He wears no diadem, which is a later royal attribute, but is consistently shown with dynamic frontal hair waves, the Anastole. There is no confirmed life-time portrait of Alexander the Great on his coins, but his mass produced coinage shows an idealized beardless hercules wearing the lionskin, which may have been seen as his likeness. Postumous portraits of Alexander the Great with various Godly attributes were common on the coins of his successors, before these dared to show their own portraits at the beginning of the 3rd century BC.

"This paper proposes a new identification of a mosaic workshop of Late Antiquity in the Near East. Two mosaic pavements, that is, the mosaic of the Bath of Achilles discovered forty years ago in room 40 of the Villa of Theseus in Nea Paphos, Cyprus, and the renowned representation of the Life of Alexander from the
Villa of Patrikios in Baalbeck, published by M. Chéhab in 1958, display many similarities which leave no doubt that both of them were made by the same mosaic workshop. In the first half of the 5th century, like during the whole Roman period, Cypriot mosaics were closely linked with those of the Syro-Palestinian coastal area. The author suggests also a new date of execution of the mosaic from Baalbeck in the first half of the 5th century."

The publication is devoted to monument of victory erected on the Acropolis of Athens around 200 BC Analyzing the artistic features of the sculptural group the author presents a modern versions of its "reading", talking about the innovative ideas of the sculptors of Pergamon, representing the greatness of not only the winner but the pathos is defeated. The author dwells on the topic of influence of  these images  on Western European art, and was first drawn in this connection to the paintings of Romanticism' epoch. The publication is prepared by the  temporary exhibition of four sculptures from the collection of the National  Archaeological Museum of Naples, organized in the Hermitage museum

With impeccable provenance, and finding its closest parallels in portraits of Alexander in Leipzig and in Stuttgart, this portrait still preserves extensive traces of its original gilding. Certain features suggest that the head was not separately made, as is the case for most Hellenistic ruler portraits, but was integral to a complete marble statue. Parallels suggest this portrait dates to the 3rd century BC.

Lists 15 examples of the Ascension of the prophet Elijah in frontal view in Byzantine and post-Byzantine painting (10th-19th cs.). Argues that this particular iconographic type is not derived from images of Alexander the Great's aerial flight. Instead, both images belong to the same encompassing theme, which was often used to represent an apotheosis.

This article presents a terracotta head depicting Alexander the Great, which was discovered in Karanis by the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, it dates back to the 5th or 6th century AD. The head itself dates back to the late second or early first century BC judging by the stylistic criteria and when comparing it to another Alexander’s terracotta head conserved in the Alexandria Greco-Roman Museum. The two heads have much in commun in terms of mould, technique and style, which could lead to the possibility that the Alexandria head was manufactured in the Fayum region as was the other one. The new Alexander’s head looks very much like the so-called Leocharis portrait of Alexander, albeit some Lysippan features, which are also found on small heads of Alexander from Egypt. This portrait of Alexander once surmounted a complete statuette that was used in public or domestic cult of the Macedonian in Karanis. Such cult is still lacking direct evidence from the site, but its likelihood is based on the proof of Alexander and Ptolemaic cults in other Fayum towns.

La natura dei processi di volgarizzamento è stata oggetto di molteplici ed approfonditi studi da parte di alcuni dei più grandi filologi italiani. I numerosi volgarizzamenti dell'Historia de preliis mostrano un campo interessante e in parte ancora inesplorato di analisi. Nel raccontare le vicende del Macedone in lingua volgare il lettore medievale si trovava di fronte alla necessità di trasferire concetti provenienti da vari ambiti da un sistema di riferimento socio-linguistico ad un altro. In particolar la necessità di muoversi tra concetti politici differenti poneva il volgarizzatore di fronte a scelte complesse. Questo intervento discuterà alcune delle difficoltà incontrate dai volgarizzatori, con particolare riferimento al Libro del Nascimento, testo di origine veneta.

Les portraits des souverains lagides illustrent parfaitement le phénomène inouï de profusion des images royales à l’époque hellénistique. Confectionnés dans des matériaux divers et selon des techniques variées, les effigies de ces rois apparaissent en effet sur des supports multiples aux dimensions différentes. Parmi ces formes de portrait, le portrait en terre cuite, spécifique, retient l’attention. Moins connu que les images fabriquées dans des matériaux précieux, il nous per- met de nous interroger sur l’existence de représentations destinées, a priori, au plus grand nombre. Les effigies en terre cuite étaient-elles largement diffusées dans le royaume ? On pourra apporter des éléments de réponse en considérant le corpus rassemblé, l’iconographie adoptée pour représenter les reines et les rois, et les lieux de découverte de ces portraits d’argile en évoquant notamment le matériel coroplathique mis au jour sur des sites localisés dans le Delta et le Fayoum.

The coinage of Philip II of Macedon. The coinage of Alexander the Great; the posthumous issues in the name of Alexander; imitations (Thracian, Arabian); Celtic imitations of coins of Philip II. Later impact of the numismatic heritage of Alexander.

Cette étude, qui porte sur les portraits des souverains à l’époque hellénistique, dégage les éléments d’une sémantique des formules iconographiques adoptées. Il s’agit de s’interroger sur la construction de l’image royale et plus particulièrement sur le visage du souverain. Les motivations du commanditaire, le savoir-faire de l’artiste et le regard du spectateur sur l’image royale seront tour à tour examinés. Les notions de ressemblance et d’idéalisation seront abordées.

The article concerns the conception of  renewal  of the permanent display of ancient art and culture in the State Hermitage museum.  The key idea of the conception is to keep neo-classical style following idea of  Leo von Klenze.  The article is published in the Proceeding of the conference "Museum in the 21st century. Restoration, reconstruction, renovation  reconstruction", St-Petersburg, 2012