The Battle of Issus

Jan Brueghel signed and dated this in 1602, in Antwerp, while the siege of Ostend was in its second year about 100 kilometres up the coast and had two more to run. What he painted was a battle 1,900 years older, Alexander against Darius, seen from high up so the eye travels over miles of ground, past the hand-to-hand fighting at the front, the cavalry, the tents and the mountains behind. The panel was in Louis XIV's collection long before there was a Louvre, and for most of the 18th century it was catalogued as the Battle of Arbela, Alexander's later victory over the same king. The group at the right settled that question. Those are Darius's mother, wife and daughters, taken prisoner after Issus in 333 BC and not at Arbela, and the Louvre has renamed the picture accordingly.