3-038-345 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Alexander the Great in the Air; Weltchronik, about 1400-1410. In a scene representing one of the stories from the legend of Alexander the Great most popular in the Middle Ages, the world conqueror, dressed as a European monarch might be, is pulled aloft by a pair of griffins and an angel. They hover precariously over a sea filled with an entertaining variety of fish and other creatures. The artist emphasizes the strange chair's upward movement as it carries the group out of the square framework of the miniature and takes off into the text.