PHILOXENOS OF ERETRIA (copy after): “The battle of Issos”, c.170 b.c. - Mosaic - Archaeological Museum, Naples .

“The battle of Issos” is the unquestionable masterpiece of painting from the Classic Greece, known by a copy found in the “House of the Faun” in Pompeii . With a heartrendering dramatic quality and a remarkable sensation of profundity, the scene narrates the moment in which Alexander the Great - represented from the side and with a face that emanates force and decision- attacks King Dario, central figure in the composition. The force of the work and the sensation of movement caused by the foreshortenings of the horses and the inclined lances inevitably remind us to “The Battle of San Romano” painted by Paolo Uccello many centuries later, although in this case the sensation of profundity is not created by the perspective - that logically is nonexistent- but by the complexity in the disposition of the figures in many superposed levels.