page_title: The Family of Darius before Alexander
section_title: Painting
hierarchical_section_title: The Family of Darius before Alexander / Painting
context_page_description: The Family of Darius before Alexander is a 1565–1570 oil on canvas painting by Paolo Veronese. It depicts Alexander the Great with the family of Darius III, the Persian king he had defeated in battle. Although Veronese had previously painted a version of the subject, since destroyed, the theme had rarely been depicted by other artists before him. The painting has been in the collection of the National Gallery in London since 1857.
context_section_description: The composition preserves this ambiguity, and reflects the confusion of Sisygambis. Generally the scholarship is in agreement that Alexander is the young man in red, who gestures as if in the act of speaking while referring to Hephaestion at his left, though some historians dispute that interpretation and reverse the two figures' identities. The continued uncertainty as to their correct identification is taken as evidence of Veronese's "pictorial intelligence." 
  While honoring the spirit of the story, Veronese took liberties with his interpretation of the narrative, which in the painting occurs in a palatial hall, not a tent. The splendid wardrobe is that of the Venice in which Veronese lived, rather than ancient Greece or the Far East. It has long been supposed that Veronese inserted portraits of his contemporaries into the painting, as was customary in Venetian history painting. While it has been suggested that the figures were modeled after members of the Pisani family, for whose estate the picture was made, it has alternatively been proposed that the kneeling girls are Veronese's daughters, and the courtier who presents them is the artist's self-portrait.  Another interpretation has Veronese appearing in the form of the man standing behind Alexander, while it has been suggested that it is the patron, Francesco Pisani, who presents the family to Alexander. Recently art historian Nicholas Penny has written that the painting's characterizations of cultivated nobility were based on no particular models, and were products of the artist's imagination. 
  The picture's theatrical design places the most prominent figures in a shallow foreground stage. Immediately behind them are a diverting company of pages, halberdiers, dwarfs, dogs and monkeys, and in the further distance looms an architectural screen, an arched promenade parallel to the picture plane and supporting more spectators. These are pictorial preferences typical of Veronese, with the placement of figures and edifices reinforcing a processional character. The curves of the distant arches echo the movement of the supplicated foreground figures, while the gesture of Sisygambis corresponds to and is reinforced by the verticals of the central fountain; the architectural geometry organizes the movement of the figures.
  Analysis of the canvas has shown that it was a type favored by Veronese, with an arrangement of threads creating a diagonal twill pattern. While he often preferred to paint on lightly colored grounds, for The Family of Darius before Alexander, as with many of his larger paintings, Veronese prepared the canvas only with plain gesso. Though he routinely made numerous preparatory sketches, Veronese made major revisions while working on The Family of Darius before Alexander, including painting out a balcony with figures directly behind the main group, and adding lightly sketched horses and figures to the left background, perhaps as an afterthought.
caption: Detail of the central groups, with the family of Darius being presented to Alexander and Hephaestion.
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