the History of Alexander Great

Reproduces 14 images from a 15th century manuscript, now in the J. Paul Getty Musuem. The commentary places the manuscript within its context as an account of Alexander's life. This book reproduces in color all fourteen images from a fifteenth-century manuscript, now part of the J. Paul Getty Museum collection. One of the finest illuminated secular manuscripts produced in the Netherlands during the period, the manuscript features miniatures that illustrate important episodes from the short life of the legendary Macedonian general. Titled Les fais d'Alexandre le grant, the manuscript is itself a translation of a text attributed to first-century Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus, whose Latin text is one of our principal literary sources for our knowledge of Alexander. McKendrick's authoritative text places the Getty's manuscript in its contexts as history and art and explains how the text and illuminations have much to tell us as well about the politics and aesthetics of the Burgundian Netherlands and the development of secular culture in Western Europe.

Alexander III of Macedon, commonly known as Alexander the Great, was an ancient Macedonian ruler and one of history’s greatest military minds. As King of Macedonia and Persia, Alexander established the largest empire the ancient world had ever seen. It is the object of this series of histories to present a clear, distinct, and connected narrative of the lives of those great personages who have in various ages of the world made themselves celebrated as leaders among mankind, and, by the part they have taken in the public affairs of great nations, have exerted the widest influence on the history of the human race.