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The 'Boyhood of Alfred the Great' is one of Leighton's many medieval historical works, completed (1913). It a scene from the early life of Alfred the Great, the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon kings, King of Wessex. He is commonly the first monarch that can ve describbed an English king. Alfred is the only English monarch to be given the wll-deserved sobriquent 'Great'. The medieval era was a very long medieval era--basically an entire mellennium. Artists has contemporary paintings to go on the late medieval era. Much less is availble for the early medievl peioid. So the images produced or more based on imaginaton thn for later periods. Leighton 's clothing depictions are basically those commonly accepted in modern assessments. We see Alfred with a brother enjoying a story being read to them. Who the young woman is Leighton leaves up to the viewer. Alfred was the fifth son of King Aethelwulf and succeeded his brother Aethelred as King (871). Royalty commonly left such domestic duties to servants. Books at the time were very rare and expensive. We wonder what books besides theBible might have been of interest to boys this age. Not only were few people at the time literate, it was especially rare for women to be literate.
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