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BRUEGHEL, Jan the Elder: The Battle of Issus

🖼 The Battle of Issus, 1602
Oil on wood
86 × 135 cm
Paris, France

Teeming masses clash across a vast landscape where armies sprawl from foreground to distant horizon, rendered in meticulous detail with oil on panel. Brueghel captures Alexander's victory over Darius through bird's-eye perspective, transforming historical battle into a dizzying, almost abstract pattern—pioneering the epic panoramic composition for Northern European art.

The story of art
The story of art
E. H. Gombrich
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