These are far more than simply four horses taken as plunder. For fifteen hundred years, from 1000 BC to AD 500, a team of four horses represented status. (So much so that some emperors portrayed themselves with six or even ten horses, to push their status still higher!) In the Greek world the chariot drawn by four horses reinforced the role of the games, at Olympia and other sites, as aristocratic gatherings. The gods, and even the citizens of Athens in their most arrogant representation on the Parthenon frieze, travelled in quadrigae. In the Roman period a quadriga drew the victor in his triumph in Rome and quadrigae were adopted by the emperors as their symbol of eternal victory. So they are infused with meanings from the classical world.
In later centuries, however, the horses’ significance proved ambiguous enough for them to take on other roles. They could stand as a religious emblem, as ‘quadriga of the Lord’, and this could justify their position on a Christian basilica while at the same time, a few miles away in a fresco in the Scrovegni chapel in Padua, Giotto could portray them as a symbol of pagan idolatry. Were they even placed on the loggia to endow the Piazza with the aura of a ceremonial hippodrome in which the doges asserted their imperial authority? Perhaps; but times moved on, and by the fourteenth century the horses had acquired a new role as a symbol of Venetian national pride.
If we are to understand the continuing success of the horses as icons, then, we must grasp that it is precisely because they have proved so adaptable to the history which they have watched evolve around them that their power has endured. Some reminder of this long history is to be found in an evocative nineteenth-century poem, ‘I Cavalli di San Marco’ by Giacomo Zanella.* In it, each horse speaks in turn, reflecting back on their past. The first horse remembers the great times when the bell of St Mark’s welcomed back thousands of ships from as far afield as Egypt and Scandinavia. The nobler citizens were brought back precious stones coloured with the sun of Asia to weave into their hair, and even the poor of the city could wear silk. The recollections of the second horse are more cultural. He has memories of Byzantium, the hippodrome, the theatres full of statues and the imperial palaces by the sea. Now, in Venice, there is the architecture of Palladio and Bramante to admire, and the great palaces of merchants. At the height of the city’s artistic achievement Titian could be watched walking among the admiring crowds, while humanists such as Pietro Bembo were to be seen deep in conversation.
The third horse remembers Venice’s political and naval power. He wishes he could have been with the doges on their expeditions to the east and at the great battles between Venice and the Turks. Even today, he goes on, the name of Venice is remembered from the Aegean to the Byzantine waterways. Although the flags of the city’s enemies are now destroyed, memories of their being dragged in as icons of victory still linger. Finally, the fourth horse reflects on how, on his return from Paris, he saw the yellow and black flag of Austria fluttering on the standards before St Mark’s. He turned his head away and could not even neigh until the moment he heard the crowd roaring for Manin. The people of Venice cannot be tamed and the virtue of the old days cannot be extinguished. Yet, if ever a challenge so great as that of Lepanto arose, he wonders, would the spirit of the lion of St Mark still be alive in the youth of the Adriatic?
For the time being the horses have lost their proud vantage point; but it is not impossible that they will be restored to the loggia of St Mark’s. In July 2001 Vittorio Sgrabi, the under-secretary for culture in the Italian government, announced that the scientific evidence that the horses had suffered from pollution did not stand up. The intricacies of decision-making in the Italian national and regional bureaucracies make immediate changes unlikely, but it is possible that the horses will one day be triumphantly presented yet again to the people of Venice.
In November 1966, freak weather conditions sent the sea surging through the openings into the Venetian lagoon. For some twenty hours, Venice was covered by 2 metres of water. As its inhabitants waited in darkness there were some who feared that the waters would never recede and that this was indeed the end of the city. Venice is fragile. Its population dwindled in the 1990s and it is continuously assailed by two forms of waves: those of the acqua alta, the floods, and those of the tourists whose daily influx now exceeds the number of residents. Its death has been predicted in almost every generation; an anxiety that it will crumble into the lagoon pervades its history. Yet somehow it endures. The horses, in their porous copper, are equally fragile – but they endure too. In Aldo Palazzeschi’s novel, Il Doge, published in 1967, Venice is in a state of collapse and at one dramatic moment the basilica of St Mark’s disappears, just as the Campanile had done in 1902. The doge appears on the balcony of his palace, attended by the four golden horses, and like a sun-god of old he disappears with them into the sky. When all else has gone, the horses are the saviour of the last remnants of Venice’s pride.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
I list here the books which made the writing of my own easier and more pleasurable. I have not listed those consulted for general background information. I am also grateful for material or observations provided by Michael Vickers, Lydia Fetto, Tony Harvey and Terry Harris, and for the help given with the translation of the Zanella poem by Ferdinando Giugliano.
Anyone researching the horses of St Mark’s is deeply indebted to the catalogue to the 1979 exhibition of the horses, The Horses of San Marco, by a variety of authors, all translated for the English edition by John and Valerie Wilton-Ely (London, Thames & Hudson, 1979). It contains a large number of essays which have been quarried for this book, and most translations of impressions of the horses come from this source. Specific studies of the horses include Vittorio Galliazzi, I Cavalli di San Marco (Treviso, Editrice Canova, 1981), although Galliazzi’s dating of the horses is challenged by recent research on copper casting. Michael Jacoff, The Horses of San Marco and the Quadriga of the Lord (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992), sets out the case for a religious rationale for the placing of the horses on St Mark’s.
On ancient Roman circuses I have used John Humphrey, Roman Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Races (London, Batsford, 1987); and on Byzantium, Cyril Mango, The Oxford History of Byzantium (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002). For the Byzantine circus, two books by Alan Cameron, Porphyrius the Charioteer (Oxford, OUP, 1973) and Circus Factions (Oxford, OUP, 1976), proved especially helpful. On the Fourth Crusade, I consulted Donald Nicol, Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Books on Venice overwhelm. For recent historical surveys, see John Martin and Dennis Romano, Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797 (Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000; essays on aspects of Venetian history and historiography) and Élisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Venice Triumphant: The Horizons of a Myth, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Baltimore and London, JHUP, 2002), the second indeed a triumphant overview of the city’s history. On architecture, Richard Goy, Venice: The City and its Architecture (London, Phaidon, 1997), and Deborah Howard, The Architectural History of Venice, 2nd edn (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2002), are both excellent. On Venetian ritual, Edwin Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton and London, PUP, 1981), is the standard introduction to ceremonial life in the Piazza. I have also drawn on Debra Pincus, The Tombs of the Doges of Venice (Cambridge, CUP, 2000). Quotations from Goethe’s Italian Journey (1786–8) are taken from the Penguin Classics edition translated by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer.
For background to the reception of ancient art in general, see Roberto Weiss, Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford, OUP, 1973), Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique (New Haven and London, YUP, 1981), and Francis Haskell, History and its Images (New Haven and London, YUP, 1993). Specifically on Venice, Patricia Fortini-Brown, Venice and Antiquity (New Haven and London, YUP, 1996) proved essential.
On the Renaissance in general, J
ohn Hale, The Civilisation of Europe in the Renaissance (London, HarperCollins, 1993), is a fine overview. On Venice in particular, see Patricia Fortini-Brown, The Renaissance in Venice (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997). Excellent on the painting is Bruce Cole, Titian and Venetian Painting 1450–1590 (Oxford, Westview, 1999).
On Canova, a good starting point is C. Johns, Antonio Canova and the Politics of Patronage in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France (Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 1998). On Napoleon’s Paris, Marie Louise Biver, Paris de Napoléon (Paris, Plon, 1963), has full details of the building of the Arc du Carrousel for those who can read French.
For Venice over the past two hundred years, Margaret Plant, Venice: Fragile City, 1797–1997 (New Haven and London, YUP, 2002), is outstanding – like other Yale publications, not least for the quality of its illustrations. See also John Pemble, Venice Rediscovered (Oxford, OUP, 1996), and Tony Tanner, Venice Desired (Oxford, OUP, 1992), which deal with the responses to the city of outsiders and writers.
INDEX
Aachen cathedral, 209
Académie Française, 5, 219
Achilles, 33–4, 35, 37
Acre, 94, 249
Actium, 25
Adrianople, 85, 86
Adriatic Sea, 75, 79, 85, 117, 118–19, 123, 187, 276
Aegean Sea, 80, 85, 128, 171, 276
Aegina, 85
Aemilius Paulus, 4, 5
Africa, 4, 47, 64, 70, 269
Agnadello, battle of, 129
Agrippina, Empress, 218
Alberti, Leon Battista, The Art of Building, 147–8
Alcibiades, 38, 143
Aldus Manutius, 137, 145
Alexander the Great, 47, 138, 180; Lysippus as favourite sculptor, 14, 26, 60, 140; reign, 182–3; figure of, 185; gilded statue, 264
Alexander sarcophagus, 258
Alexander, Tsar, 208
Alexandria, 71, 72, 87
Alexius Angelus (Alexius IV, emperor), 79–81
Alexius I, emperor, 106
Alexius III, emperor, 79, 80–1
Alexius V, emperor, 81, 82
Alfieri, Vittorio, 214, 217, 240
Amalfi, 68
Anagni cathedral, 99
Anastasius, emperor, 65
Ancona, 118, 137
Andros, 85
Angel Gabriel, 93
Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar, Dowager Duchess, 189
Annals of Fine Arts, 231, 233
Annunciation, 70, 93
Antinous, 184, 267
Antiochus IV, king of Commagene, 17
Antonine altar, 17
Antwerp cathedral, 199
Apelles, 47, 139–40, 149, 180
Aphrodite 159; of Cnidus, 139, 175
Apollo, 17; statues, 24, 59; sanctuary at Delphi, 50
Apollo Belvedere, 2, 170, 181–2, 183, 200, 208, 210, 221, 230, 233
Aquileia, 70, 71
Aretino, Pietro, 146
Arezzo, 133
Argos, 147
Aristotle, 13, 130, 200
Arrotino, 170
art: seizure of treasures, 6–7, 199–200, 207–10; classical (ancient), 12–1, 145–6, 233, 236, 259–60, 274; Christian, 98–9, 260; Platonic ideal, 146–8, 180, 228, 232; Venetian, 148–9, 168, 176; pagan, 154; sublime, 180–1, 184; Greek, 180, 182, 238, 259; Renaissance, 181; Roman imperial, 185; Napoleonic, 211; Egyptian, 234; Etruscan, 234; Roman, 238, 259; gothic, 247; Hellenistic, 257, 259–60, 262; psychological effect, 273; see also sculpture, ancient
Ascension Day, 117, 212
Asia, 129, 275
Athena, 142
Athens, 17, 34–5, 41, 141–3, 229, 234, 274; falls to Turks, 141; sack by Sulla, 200 LANDMARKS: Acropolis, 141, 143, 238; Parthenon, 35, 59, 138, 139, 141–3, 175, 229, 231, 232; Piraeus, 59; tomb of Philopappas, 17, 138; see also Parthenon sculptures
Attila the Hun, 70
Auerstadt, battle of, 238
Augustus, emperor, 23, 25–7, 46, 177, 201, 259–60, 267; triumphal arch, 47, 141; on coins, 133; mausoleum, 141; Prima Porta statue, 260
Aurelii family, 136
Austerlitz, battle of, 203
Austria, 191–3, 196, 207, 224, 242, 244, 276
Baldwin of Flanders, 77, 85, 86
Balkans, 21, 24, 108
Barletta, 88
Bassae, 229
Belgium, 199
Belisarius, 64, 65
Bellini, Gentile, 149, 159, 167; Procession in the Piazza San Marco, 112, 113, 114, 122, 152
Bellini, Giovanni, 145, 148, 149, 167; The Madonna and Child Enthroned, 196
Bellini, Jacopo, 149, 150, 159
Belluno, 141
Beltrame, Achille, 253
Belvedere Torso, 183, 221
Bembo, Pietro, 144–5, 275
Bergamo, 156
Berlin, University of, 238
Bern, 4
Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, 172
Bessarion, Cardinal, 134–5, 161, 163
Black Sea, 118, 129
Boeotia, 237
Bologna, 118, 130, 199; church of San Giacomo Maggiore, 150, 151
Bonaparte, Elisa, 206, 215
Bonaparte, Napoleon, see Napoleon Bonaparte
Bonaparte, Pauline, 206, 217
Borghese, Prince, 206, 217
Boyle, Nicholas, 186
Bozzotti, Maria, 275n
Bramante, Donato, 275
Brandenburg, 238
Britain, 191, 207; Roman conquest, 46
British Museum, 209, 257; krater, 35
bronze, 50, 160, 171, 182, 185, 263–5; see also metal casting
Bruges, 199
Bulgars, 86
Byron, Lord, 187, 229, 245; Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage quoted, 223
Byzantine empire, 16, 62–3; relations with Venice, 68, 70–1, 75–7, 123; disputed throne, 79–81; fall, 85–6; revival, 118
Byzantium, 21–2, 30, 134, 268–9, 270, 275
Cacault, François, 214
Calamis (sculptor), 143
Caligula, emperor, 23
Canal, Martino da, 92, 107, 109
Canaletto (Antonio Canal), 158, 159, 176, 224
Canova, Antonio, 8, 198, 208, 210, 211–22; relations with Napoleon, 211, 214–17; appointed Director of Museums in Rome, 217; negotiates return of art treasures, 218–19, 239; suggests horses be placed on waterfront in Venice, 224, 235; in London, 224–5; examines Elgin marbles, 226, 228–9; death and funeral, 239–40; Cupid and Psyche, 213; ‘Ideal Heads’, 221
Cape Artemisium, 32
Cape of Good Hope, 129
Capitoline Venus, 2, 200
Caracalla, emperor, 17, 269, 270
Carpaccio, Vittore, 151, 153; St Augustine in his Study, 160–1
Carrey, Jacques, 142
Casanova, Giacomo Girolamo, 177
Castiglione, Sabba di, 159
Castlereagh, Lord, 208, 218, 221
casting, process of, 50–61; see also metal casting
casts, 171–2
Catholicism, 239
Cellini, Benvenuto, 53–8, 171, 263
Cestius, 133
Champollion, Jean François, 209n
Chaptal, Jean Antoine, 206
chariot racing, 22–3, 26–7, 36–44, 49, 116; teams, 43, 64–5; replaced by imperial ritual, 66–7
chariots, 12, 34–7, 44, 97–8, 267–8
Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, 133
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 130, 168, 236
Charles I, King of England, 172
Charles IX, King of France, 200
chemistry, 175
Chilone, Vincenzo, 224, 227
Chioggia, 127
Chios, 14, 30, 140, 237, 257, 259, 267–8
Choiseul-Daillecourt, M. de, 237
Chonai, 79n
Christianity, 63, 70, 101, 108, 132, 146, 238; destruction of pagan art, 154; and fall of Roman empire, 236
Christians, 15, 18, 20, 63, 236; destruction of statues, 174
Chronicon Paschale, 112
Cicognara, Count Leopold, 214, 224, 235–40; Il Bello, 235
Cimaroli, Battista, 177
Cimon, 38
Circe, 26
Claudius, emperor, 46
Clement VII, Pope, 130
Clement XIII, Pope, 213
Clement XIV, Pope, 213
Cleosthenes of Epidamnus, 49
Code Civil (Napoleonic), 201
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 172
Colleoni, Bartolomeo, 152, 155, 156–7, 158
Cologne, 27
Colonna, Giovanni, 132
Commagene, 17
Commodus, emperor, 45
Constantine, emperor: rise to power, 15–16; patronage of Christians, 15, 18, 20; founding of Constantinople, 16, 21–2, 25, 28–31, 62, 112, 268; sun symbolism 16–20, 28; adventus, 17, 24; ‘thirteenth apostle’, 22, 63; hippodromes, 24, 28; association with St Mark’s horses, 48, 60, 141, 173, 258, 268, 270, 271; acclaimed emperor, 64; preservation of Roman empire, 70; aped by Venetian doges, 117; equestrian statue ascribed to, 154
Constantine V, emperor, 66
Constantinople: St Mark’s horses in, 5, 13, 14, 48, 63, 141, 173, 237, 254, 257, 274; foundation, 16, 21–2, 25, 28–31, 62, 90–1, 112, 268; falls to Ottoman Turks, 62, 128, 134–5; Nika riots, 65–6, 68; Book of Ceremonies, 67; population, 67; rebuilding, 68, 269–70; Venetian community, 68, 71, 73, 76, 81, 117–18; Venetian conquest, 68, 80–91, 92, 95, 117, 134, 135; Genoan community, 75; trade, 75–7; treasures removed to Venice, 87–91, 93–5, 106; quadrigae used in triumphs, 98; podesta, 105–6; Easter procession, 107–8; imperial coronations, 109
LANDMARKS: Church of the Holy Apostles, 22, 72, 82, 89; church of St Polyeuktos, 88, 94; hippodrome, 24–30, 60, 63–4, 66, 84, 89, 90, 110–12, 114, 140, 257, 268, 274, 275; imperial forums, 73; Mese, 29; Milion, 29, 63, 90–1, 237, 257, 268–71; Santa Sophia, 22, 68, 86, 88, 99; Stama, 29, 268
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