The Hephaestion assemblage is a mixed media tribute to Alexander the Great’s most important lover and friend. It is composed of a quartz crystal tower surmounted by a silvered ball and a gilded figure of a Greek warrior. The base is surrounded by bones evoking the terrible carnage of conquest( no matter how glamorous the leading general)and the extravagant funeral pyre that Alexander constructed for his dead partner.
Alexander and Roxanne at their marriage bed. Hephaestion is conspicuously one the right. Painted by the ironically named Il Sodoma at the Villa Farnesina in 1517.
Greek bust of Hephaestion circa 320 BC.
The family of Darius before Alexander by Paolo Veronese in 1570. The elderly woman kneeling mistook Hephaestion for Alexander and Alexander responded ” He too is Alexander.”
‘The funeral pyre of Hephaistion.’ – (Reconstruction after Diodor by Franz Jaffe). Woodcut, c.1900, coloured, after F. Buracz.
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