The Triumph of Alexander

Bernardo di Stefano Rosselli's Triumph of Alexander, painted around 1485 and now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, depicts the triumphal return of Alexander the Great after his conquests — a subject drawn from classical history and hagiographic-historical tradition that was extremely popular for secular cassone and spalliere panels in Florence during the second half of the fifteenth century. Alexander the Great was the supreme exemplar of military conquest and imperial glory in the classical tradition, and his triumphs were depicted on Roman sarcophagi and arches that Florentine humanists were studying and drawing.

Tempera on panel with the panoramic horizontal composition typical of cassone painting. The Triumph of Alexander is rendered as a grand procession moving across the panel — soldiers, elephants, chariots, and the triumphant conqueror himself in a car drawn by prancing horses.