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Alexander the Great Rescued from the River Cydnus

Pietro Testa Italian
ca. 1650
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 620
According to Testa’s earliest biographer, the artist sought to study the light and atmosphere of night by standing along Rome’s Tiber River “drawing and observing some reflections of the rainbow in the water.” The results were melancholy landscapes that prefigure the work of nineteenth-century Romantic landscape painters. It was in such a situation of direct observation by night that Testa evidently drowned, allegedly by suicide, in 1650. This dramatic depiction of Alexander the Great suffering from a sudden chill while bathing in the river Cydnus is considered one of his final paintings, and it eerily echoes his biography.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Alexander the Great Rescued from the River Cydnus
  • Artist: Pietro Testa (Italian, Lucca 1612–1650 Rome)
  • Date: ca. 1650
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 38 x 54 in. (96.5 x 137.2 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Gift of Eula M. Ganz, in memory of Paul H. Ganz, 1987
  • Object Number: 1987.75
  • Curatorial Department: European Paintings

More Artwork

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Plato's symposium: Socrates and his companions seated around a table discussing ideal love interruputed by Acibiades at left, Pietro Testa Italian, Etching
Plato's symposium: Socrates and his companions seated around a table discussing ideal love interruputed by Acibiades at left
Pietro Testa
Vicenzo Billi
1648
Achilles dragging the body of Hector around the walls of Troy
Pietro Testa
ca. 1648–50
The Adoration of the Magi, set before and architectural colonnade
Pietro Testa
ca 1650–60
Self portait as an artist, holding a drawing board and implement, Pietro Testa Italian, Etching
Self portait as an artist, holding a drawing board and implement
Pietro Testa
Arnold van Westerhout
ca. 1645
The deluge, figures being pulled from the water, Pietro Testa Italian, Etching
The deluge, figures being pulled from the water
Pietro Testa
ca. 1640–42

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