Lot 1603 Dα

This work depicts the mother of the Persian King Darius III Sisygambis and his wife Stateira with his children and concubines kneeling before the Macedonian King Alexander the Great following his victory in the Battle of Issos in 333 B.C. This motif from ancient Greek history was popular throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, and has here been rendered in a large-format work by the painter Pierre Joseph Verhagen from Brabant. The work could be identical to a piece mentioned by U. Thieme and F. Becker in their biographical dictionary of artists as belonging to the Ahrenberg collection in Brussels (vol. 34, Leipzig 1940, p. 247) but on loan to the Ghent art museum at the time of writing.
Verhagen was born in Aerschot and is considered one of the most important painters active in Brabant in the 18th century. Following his training in Antwerp under Balthasar Beschey, he settled in Leuven, where he primarily painted religious works for the abbeys of Löwen and Brabant (see also lot 1604, an oil study for a large-format depiction of the Expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael painted for the Abbey of Tongerlo). He also occasionally painted mythological or historical paintings, to which the present large scale work is an impressive testament.