Alexander the Great Cuts the Gordian Knot

In 1710 Donato Creti was commissioned together with the architectural painter Marcantonio Chiarini (1652-1730) to paint the Sala d’Alessandro in the Palazzo Pepoli Campogrande, the room adjacent to the Sala dell’Olimpo, frescoed by Giuseppe Maria Crespi. The subject of Creti’s centre picture is an episode related in biographies of Alexander the Great that took place in the spring of 333. B.C. in the Phrygian city of Gordium. The daredevil deed of the intrepid young hero could be related to the painter’s patron, Alessandro Pepoli.