The Horses of St. Mark's

by Charles Freeman

  So why go to all this extra bother of casting in copper? There are clues to be found from examining other objects in the same metal. One of the few surviving copper statuettes from the Roman period is of a Hercules, found on Hadrian’s Wall in northern Britain and dating to perhaps the third century AD. In comparison to bronze statues it is stiff and unnatural, rather crude, even. This appears to reflect the difficulty of reproducing intricate detail in copper. Yet, like the horses, it is gilded – and so is another piece of copper of some 95 per cent purity, a horse’s hoof found at Sparta in Greece. It is the association of gilding with pure or almost pure copper which seems significant.

  Gilding involves fixing a layer of gold on to a core metal. It is a skilled business, involving the beating out of gold leaf and then its effective application to the surface of whatever is to be gilded. In smaller statues this can be done by wrapping the leaf around the statue and beating it into the shape – a process that was certainly being done as early as 2000 BC in Egypt, where gold was plentiful. On larger statues one could cut grooves around an important feature, such as the face of a god, fix the edge of the leaf into the grooves and then beat down the leaf over the features. Parts of two statues with gold added in this way have been found on the Acropolis in Athens, and there is an account in Pliny of the Emperor Nero applying gold to a statue of Alexander the Great, although this so offended taste that it was later removed. Attempts were also made to fix the gold leaf directly on to the metal, probably with a thin layer of mercury applied to the statue as an adhesive, but these appear to have been unsuccessful, with the leaf gradually working itself free over time. It certainly would not be a suitable method for a statue designed to be positioned outdoors, where the battering of the elements would soon have dislodged the gold.

  A breakthrough appears to have been made in China in the third century BC (or at least, these are the time and the place of the earliest known example), when gold was mixed with boiling mercury to form a paste which could then be applied to the metal. The mercury was then heated off, leaving the gold in place. The procedure is known as fire gilding. An alternative method is known by which mercury was first applied to the surface, then gold added and the two allowed to dissolve in each other before the mercury was heated off. Both processes gave the same finish, but the use of the paste made it easier to add further layers.

  There was, however, a problem with using mercury: it reacts with tin or lead, so the method is not successful when applied to bronze. Analysis of surviving bronzes which have been gilded shows that they are never gilded by the mercury method, and a twelfth-century account of gilding by one Theophilus makes the point explicitly: copper and silver, he says, are more easily gilded (by the mercury process) than bronze in that bronze is disfigured by white stains when the mercury is heated off. An examination of the gilding of the St Mark’s horses shows that mercury was used to provide an initial gilding and that either at the same time or later further gold leaf was applied (four coatings in one section of a tail). Significantly, where bronze patches had been applied to fill in holes or imperfections, the gilding has not taken.

  While the gilding process using mercury is found in China in the third century BC, there are no examples in the classical world until the Hellenistic period, from which a few bracelets and finger rings in gilded copper survive. The cost of mercury and gold appears to have been prohibitive for any larger statue. Sometime in the second or third century AD new sources of mercury, or perhaps better means of extracting it, appear to have been discovered in the Roman world and for the first time it proved possible to fire-gild large statues. It was clearly the best way of applying gilding – much more effective than merely allowing a thin layer of mercury to evaporate – and by the end of the Roman period fire-gilding had become the normal method. Indeed the technique continued to be used until it was superseded by electroplating in the nineteenth century. Thus we arrive at the argument put forward by the conservationist Andrew Oddy: the horses were cast in copper because it was planned from the beginning that they would be fire-gilded. It follows that they cannot be dated before the second century AD and may well have been made in the third.

  Some supporting evidence dating the horses to these centuries can be found in the gilding. The layer of gold is very thin, 0.0008 millimetres, and it is marked by scratches. In the past there have been claims that these are the result of vandalism, attributed as we have seen variously to barbarians and even to the English engineers who removed the horses from the Arc du Carrousel in Paris. However, studies have shown that the lines are regular and shaped to follow the contours of the horses. They are clearly deliberate, and it is now appreciated that they were incised to destroy the glare which the sun shining on a pure gold surface would have created.* There is an example of similar scratching on a glass plate coated in gold which has been dated to about AD 275. It depicts a knight on horseback, and the gold on the horse has been hatched in a very similar way to that on the St Mark’s horses. Some further supporting evidence for a date in the second or third century can be found in the plates attached to the horses to cover up imperfections. These have been cut in rectangles in a way which is similar to patches on second- and third-century bronzes, including the Marcus Aurelius.

  Evidence is thus coalescing in favour of a date for the horses’ creation between the second and fourth centuries AD. This is well into the Roman era; so how do we reconcile this with the horses’ unmistakably Greek characteristics? In the second century AD, a period known as the Second Sophistic, there was a revival of interest in the ancient Greek world. In the words of the art historian Jas Elsner, we see the emergence of ‘a sophisticated antiquarian classicism drawing on eclectic sources to demonstrate its scholarship, taste and expertise’. One set of reliefs, now in the Spada Palace in Rome, represented Greek myths in what Elsner calls a ‘mood of tranquil contemplation’, and one gets the same feeling when looking at statues of Hadrian’s favourite, Antinous. There is a deliberate attempt to idealize using Greek styles. While remaining aware of the problems, explored earlier in this chapter, associated with following gut feelings about styles, we may certainly note that the horses seem to fit happily into this category of work.

  So why were they cast? This was clearly a prestige commission. Gilding must have been planned from the beginning, forcing the casters to use copper as the underlying metal. They would have needed extraordinary skills to have seen the project through to its triumphant conclusion. The horses’ long legs and short backs suggest that they were designed to stand above spectators, implying a setting such as a triumphal arch. This inference is supported by what remains of the harness and collars. A racing chariot has a yoke which is attached to the horse either by a girth around the withers or in some cases directly on to the collar. No trace of any such arrangement has been found on the St Mark’s horses, suggesting that they could have been designed just to stand in front of a chariot, in fact to be detached from it. This would have been appropriate if they were intended primarily as a symbol of triumph. If we follow this line of analysis to its logical next stage, that they were made for a triumphal arch in the second or third century AD, then an imperial commission is likely. Ever since the reign of Augustus it had been difficult for anyone other than the emperor or a member of his immediate family to celebrate a victory with a triumphal arch.

  Incidentally, this would seem to provide further evidence against the horses coming from Chios. There is no evidence of any link between that island and an emperor of this period – the last recorded visit there by an emperor was one by Tiberius in the early first century AD, and Chios did not enjoy any special privileges after the first century. One would be hard put to find a reason why a sculpture of this quality would be made on the island in the third century or transported there from elsewhere. Nor is it only this set of horses which can probably be ruled out. As we have already noted, the group of horses described as being in the hippodrome itself, the set with the female charioteer and running figure
, appeared to have been yoked. This leaves the set of horses at the Milion as being the most likely candidate for the St Mark’s group.

  At this point it is worth looking again at how the Milion horses and their chariot were described in the eighth century.

  At the golden Milion a chariot of Zeus Helios with four fiery horses driven headlong beside two statues has existed since ancient times … And the chariot of Helios was brought down into the Hippodrome, and a new little statue of the Tyche of the city was escorted in the procession carried by Helios. Escorted by many officials, it came to the Stama and received prizes from the emperor Constantine, and being crowned it went out and was placed in the Senate until the next birthday of the city.

  In other words, the ‘four fiery’ horses were detached or detachable from the chariot of Zeus Helios, as the St Mark’s horses appear to have been detachable from theirs. There is also a suggestion that the statue of Tyche, which appeared at the foundation ceremonies in AD 330, was ‘new’ in comparison to the rest of the monument. Is it possible that the ‘ancient times’ referred to by the chroniclers means the pre-Constantinian city?

  We cannot, of course, be sure that the chroniclers would have known enough about the earlier history of the city to make this distinction between Constantine’s foundation and the earlier Byzantium. However, it is an idea worth developing. If we are looking at an imperial commission in the city during the second or third century AD, then the only emperor who had a reason to celebrate a victory over Byzantium, as it then was, is Septimius Severus, emperor AD 193–211, whose troops took the city in 195. Septimius loved to celebrate his victories, the greatest of which was over the Parthians when he captured their capital on the River Tigris, Ctesiphon, in January 198. His triumph was recorded on an arch in Rome which still stands, close by the Capitoline Hill. Its reliefs show the emperor in battle, and we know from coins that a bronze quadriga stood on the summit with the emperor in the chariot and no fewer than six horses in front of him. Septimius, the first emperor from northern Africa, was also obsessed with establishing a dynasty. On the day of his victory at Ctesiphon he proclaimed his eldest son, Caracalla, Augustus and his younger son, Geta, Caesar.* They are mentioned alongside him on a dedication on the arch in Rome. (When Geta was later disgraced his name was obliterated, and only traces of it now remain.) Coins also show the two sons on horseback beside the quadriga, one either side of the horses. In a triumphal arch in Septimius’ home town of Lepcis Magna they are beside him in a triumphal chariot. Two statues are also noted as standing alongside the horses at the Milion.

  The dating of the horses to no earlier than the second century AD seems to be conclusive and this must shape speculation about their history. One must work within the general area of an imperial commission in the century and a half before AD 330, but any historical reconstruction will be highly speculative and the following is to be seen as such.

  Septimius’ troops conquer Byzantium in 195. The city is ordered to be rebuilt and a triumphal arch and a fine gilded quadriga put in hand to record the emperor’s victory. This is a city with a Greek heritage and there are skilled Greek craftsmen available to fulfil the commission (perhaps recruited specially for the rebuilding). So they are happy to work with Greek styles and, having been told the quadriga must be gilded, take on the awesome challenge of casting in copper. The emperor will be driving the quadriga but his two sons will also be commemorated with statues alongside it. When Constantine arrives in the city he preserves the quadriga and either places a sun-god in it or refashions the existing statue and gives it a new statue of Tyche for the foundation ceremony. The detached horses are left at the Milion each time the anniversary is celebrated and so they remain there through the eighth century and thereafter, until the sack of 1204.

  Early third-century AD coin showing Septimius Severus’ triumphal arch in Rome, with the emperor driving a six-horse chariot and attended by his sons Geta and Caracalla. Did he erect a similar arch, with a quadriga, in Byzantium to celebrate his conquest of the city in AD 195? If so, was this the arch for which our horses were made? (Hunterian Museum, Glasgow)

  Ideally, to support this reconstruction, we need to have evidence of a triumphal arch on which the quadriga would have stood; but there is no direct evidence of one from Septimius’ reign. Niketas Choniates does mention a triumphal arch standing in this area in the twelfth century, but it is difficult to know whether he means the Milion or a separate monument. It is not impossible that the Milion itself was a triumphal arch, reworked in Constantine’s time from an earlier one, but this is certainly a claim too far on the present evidence. We also have to be cautious about seeing Septimius’ two sons in the two statues alongside the quadriga. We know that personifications – of Victory, for instance – could be associated with quadrigae. Even with these qualifications, we may have come as close as we ever will to the horses’ origins.

  19

  ENVOI: THE HORSES AS CULTURAL ICONS

  THE AMERICAN ART HISTORIAN ROBERT NELSON TELLS THE story of a visit to his father’s grave in a middle-American city in Texas. He made his way down rows of bungalows towards the cemetery, where his father’s remains lay under a marble plaque on a lawn not far from an oak tree. There was a gateway which marked the transition between the bustling world of the living and the more sober one of the dead. On top of it, he saw, were copies of the horses which he knew stood, many thousands of miles away, above the entrance of the basilica of St Mark’s. They were ‘the size of large dogs and made of some strange material, suspiciously synthetic in appearance’.

  Nelson was shocked by their shoddy presence and reflected on what effect the owners of the cemetery might be aiming to achieve. Were they trying to make the entrance look grander, or somehow give it a higher status – in the way that lions were placed by the entrance to the New York Public Library? Or was this a means of celebrating ‘the key value of the local Texas culture’, the horse?

  By now, having followed the horses through their varied history, we can hardly be surprised by their appearance in yet another display. We live in an age where cultural icons are transferred from one context to another with bewildering rapidity. Most such icons, of course, are transient: a song lasts a month, a fashion in dress perhaps a year, an artist’s popularity among the cognoscenti perhaps ten. Yet in the horses we see icons that are still usable in a fresh context many thousands of miles away from their home two thousand years after they were made. What is the secret of their success?

  There are some icons which survive because they represent a pinnacle of human achievement. The Egyptian pyramids are a good example. It is still virtually impossible to grasp that such vast and complex monuments could have been planned and put together in a pre-technological age. (So nearly impossible, in fact, that some fantasists have conjured up sophisticated vanished civilizations to which their construction is credited.) More difficult to assess are those icons which seem to evoke a satisfying response from the brain across time and culture – the Taj Mahal in India, or the symphonies of Mozart, for instance. The philosopher Plato would have been quite at home with this phenomenon. There is beauty on this earth, he said, and it provides us with a sense, albeit an inadequate one, of what the Idea or Form of Beauty, on its eternal plane of reality, might be. In fact, Plato argued, our souls retain a recollection of the Form of Beauty, and contact with great works of art – a Mozart symphony, or Giorgione’s nude Sleeping Venus – stimulates its revival. Nowadays we would be more likely to find the exploration of the underlying reasons for our brains’ responses to music and art being conducted by psychologists, wiring up their subjects to the sound of a Mozart symphony, rather than by philosophers; but there is no doubt that music can act to bring order to the mind. Art is psychologically satisfying for us at quite a profound and perhaps even universally shared level, and this explains why some works of art attract across cultures and time.

  How central to the horses’ meaning is their aesthetic appeal? They cannot fail to have s
ome impact. They are undeniably elegant. However, their ‘beauty’ has not been universally acknowledged, even if one discounts the prejudiced condemnations of Winckelmann (the horses as decadent because they are gilded) and Haydon (they cannot be allowed to compete with his beloved Parthenon marbles). The height of their popularity as art came during the Renaissance, when they benefited from the adulation bestowed on all classical art. Nowadays we are more cautious in adopting so idealized a view of the classical past; but even if we do not follow Renaissance taste uncritically, the horses are still remarkable – for their aesthetic appeal, but also for their age, the quality of their casting, and the very fact of their survival when the vast majority of classical bronze and copper statues have been melted down.

  In addition to any significance it derives from aesthetic power and antiquity, every icon has its own history, and here the horses score highly. They are easily recognizable as prestige items, were designed for public display and, above all, have proved transportable. This means they have been eminently usable as symbols of plunder and triumph. Certainly this is why they were brought to Venice, and later to Paris, and it may have been the reason why they were in Constantinople in the first place. They have benefited in particular from the settings in which they were displayed – the hippodrome, St Mark’s and the Arc du Carrousel, vantage points from which they have watched over an extraordinary panorama of European history.