 Albrecht Altdorfer is regarded as one of the founders of Western landscape art. He was a painter, etcher, architect, and engraver, and the leader of the Danube school of German art. As evidenced by such paintings as Saint George and the Dragon (1510) and Allegory (1531), much of Altdorfer's work is characterised by an attachment to sprawling landscapes that dwarf the figures within them; The Battle of Alexander at Issus epitomises this facet of his style. With reference to St George and the Dragon in particular, art historian Mark W. Roskill comments that "The accessory material of landscape [in Altdorfer's work] is played with and ornamentally elaborated so that it reverberates with the sense of a sequestered and inhospitable environment". Inspired by his travels around the Austrian Alps and the Danube River, Altdorfer painted a number of landscapes that contain no figures at all, including Landscape with a Footbridge (c. 1516) and Danube Landscape near Regensburg (c. 1522 – 25). These were the first "pure" landscapes since antiquity. Most of Altdorfer's landscapes were made with a vertical format, in contrast with the modern conception of the genre. The horizontal landscape was an innovation of Altdorfer's Flemish contemporary Joachim Patinir and his followers.
