Jan Boeckhorst (Münster or Rees c. 1604-1668 Antwerp)

The act of crowning signifies Alexander's marriage to Roxana, in 327 B.C.. She was the daughter of Oxyartes of Balkh, a chieftain of Sogdiana. Balkh was the last of the Persian Empire's provinces to fall to Alexander, and the marriage was arranged primarily as a means of reconciling the Bactrian governors to Alexander's rule, however, Plutarch commented that Roxana was 'the only passion which he, the most temperate of men, was overcome by' (Life of Alexander, 33:47). She accompanied him on his campaign in India in 326 B.C., and bore him a son, Alexander IV Aegus, who was born after Alexander's sudden death in Babylon in 323 B.C.

Traditionally ascribed to Rubens, the attribution to Boeckhorst was first tentatively proposed by Julius Held in 1980. More recently, Elizabeth McGrath published the painting as Boeckhorst along with two other scenes from the story of Alexander: Alexander cutting the Gordian knot (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille), and Alexander and Diogenes, known through an engraving, all three of which must have made up part of a series of some kind. According to McGrath, they all display 'Rubens' style...translated through Van Dyckian elegance', as imaginative derivations from both masters. Importantly, she noted that the characters in the present sketch are shown in a sinistrarum iunctio rather than a dextrarum iunctio, that is, holding their left hands rather than right hands, a clear indication that the sketch was made to be reproduced in the opposite direction, thus in preparation for a print or book illustration, or possibly even a tapestry.