Cleveland Museum of Art

Man in Armor beside a Chariot

Francesco SalviatiLinkedCulture matchlcp-732ec289148b

Date: c. 1550
Medium: pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over black chalk, heightened with white
Culture: Italy, 16th century
Department: Drawings
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 141490

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

This drawing of a young soldier setting fire to a cart of war trophies may represent a rarely depicted legend about the Macedonian king Alexander the Great (356–323 BC), who built one of the largest empires of the ancient world by the time he was 30 years old. Because the heavy spoils of war were slowing down his troops, Alexander set fire to his own cart of goods to encourage his soldiers to do the same. Renaissance princes revered him as a brilliant military strategist. Emperor Maximilian I (reigned 1486–1519), pictured in the equestrian portrait and in the great triumphal car nearby, considered Alexander a distant ancestor.

View at Cleveland Museum of Art ↗

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.

Get printable QR codes

Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.

Open this page

See at Cleveland Museum of Art

Provenance & credit

As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.

Credit line: Dudley P. Allen Fund
Provenance: Giuseppe Vallardi (Lugt 1223, stamped, lower left, in blue ink) | Maurice Marignane (Lugt 1872, stamped, lower right, in blue ink)