Getty Manuscript Buy: Adventures of Alexander the Great

Northern France, Reims or Hainaut, Alexander in his Glass Submarine, in Romance of Alexander in prose, second version, about 1290-1300 

The Getty Museum has acquired a spectacular French Gothic manuscript of the Romance of Alexander, the only early (1290s) copy in private hands. Dr. Jörn Günther Rare Books offered the Alexander for £3 million at TEFAF 2025. 

The Romance of Alexander is loosely based on Classical accounts of Macedonian King Alexander ("the Great"). In the Middle Ages, Alexander was considered one of the Nine Worthies who personified chivalry. The story of Alexander was transmitted through verse and, starting in the 1290s, an illuminated prose version in Old French. Four early copies are known, the other three in the national libraries of Britain and Belgium and the Berlin museum. 

The Günther manuscript contains 60 miniatures out of an original hundred or so. Its pages measure about 8.1 by 6.1 inches. At top is a full-page miniature of Alexander in his glass submarine, surrounded by a phantasmagoric array of sea life. This improbable tale, derived from an account attributed to Aristotle, presents Alexander as a genius inventor-aquanaut. His diving bell is lowered into the teeming sea with chains, bumping the back of a confused whale. The craft is supplied with burning lamps to illuminate the deep. Among the inhabitants of the ocean bottom are fish that look like humans and sea dogs that eat the fruit of undersea trees.

Imagined as a medieval knight in armor, Alexander fights foes human, animal, and monster. In a combat scene of giants the club-wielding colossi are literally too big to fit in a "miniature." 

On other pages Alexander vanquishes swarms of angry bats and mice; enlists flame-throwing robots to fight elephants; plunges into a stampede of unicorns with horns serrated like steak knives.

Alexander's superhero franchise remained popular through the Renaissance. The Getty has a number of manuscripts treating Alexander, notably a Flemish Renaissance Book of Deeds of Alexander the Great, based on a different text. Last year the museum acquired a leaf from a 16th-century Armenian manuscript on Alexander.

The Romance of Alexander will debut in the Getty Center exhibition "Going Places: Travel in the Middle Ages" (Sep. 2–Nov. 30, 2025). 

Curator Elizabeth Morrison has more on the Alexander on the Getty site. Below is a video with art historian Alison Stones, supplied by dealer Dr. Jörn Günther.