The Horses of St. Mark's

by Charles Freeman

  The horses from St Mark’s epitomized the several strands of these debates. They were symbols of triumph; but they were also plunder itself. Indeed, this dual role had gone with them throughout their long history as they travelled across Europe and Asia, resting at various times in at least three, possibly four, great cities. One of the ambitions of this book is to chart the way in which they took up, bore and shed these and other symbolic roles, sometimes holding more than one at a time. Yet there is much more than this to explore. The horses were and are works of art irrespective of their symbolic significance, and debates over their aesthetic quality have surrounded them throughout their history. These debates were given resonance by the horses’ antiquity, especially during the Renaissance, when masterpieces of classical art were particularly prized. Did they, it was asked, represent some conception of the ideal horse? Should they be taken as the model whenever a horse was needed for a painting or monument? Yet the Renaissance was an age of antiquarians as well as idealists. If they were classical sculptures, where did they come from and when were they made? These questions, which were revived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, generated heated controversy. Scholars proposed, with apparent confidence, dates for their casting which stretched over nine centuries; it was not even agreed whether the horses were Greek or Roman.

  Thanks to the intervention of the great Venetian sculptor Antonio Canova, the horses were returned to their original position on St Mark’s in Venice after Napoleon’s downfall in 1815. Their present setting is somewhat less exalted. As the result of a campaign in the 1970s by the Italian company Olivetti to have them removed from the polluted air of the Venetian lagoon, they have been relegated to a brick-lined room behind the western façade of the basilica. Those horses now on the loggia are replicas, uninspiring copies. To see the originals we have to climb up a steep and narrow staircase, cross behind the loggia and then enter their confined quarters. The light is artificial and sharp. The angles from which they can be seen are limited. Even in their confinement, however, the quartet of stallions remain impressive. They are the only team of four horses surviving from antiquity, but it is not just their age which is remarkable. The skill with which they were cast is extraordinary – especially when we note that they were cast in copper, which has a higher melting point than bronze.

  The horses in their original setting in Venice, on the loggia of St Mark’s, overlooking the square. (S. Marco, Venezia/Scala)

  How can we begin to approach the horses? They certainly have a powerful aesthetic impact. The bodies retain enough of the original gilding to flaunt an air of tarnished splendour, while their proud heads radiate a mood of reflection and calm. Each horse is inclined towards its neighbour, giving them an air of approachability. The mood of restraint is enhanced by their short, cropped manes, each of which ends with a tuft on the forehead. The tails, on the other hand, are full and flow gracefully outwards, brought neatly together at the end by a band. Their collars suggest the horses are tamed, but they also exude an air of freedom. Perhaps it is in these ambiguities that much of their aesthetic attraction lies.

  As the horses were designed to be seen from below, the legs are longer than would be expected and the neck too short. The stance is that of a stallion displaying his power. (Ancient Art & Architecture Collection)

  With closer observation one can see that there are details which have been copied exactly from live horses, especially around the head, where the degree of accuracy is greatest. It has been noted, for instance, that the ‘deep corneal furrow of the eyes is strongly realistic and anatomically correct’. On the legs the chestnut, the horny lump on the inner side whose absence would hardly be noticed, is, in fact, cast, and bones, muscles and even veins have been represented. The stance, with one leg raised, is recognized body language for a display of power, especially for a stallion; one expert consulted for this book saw it also as expressive of impatience. The well-developed muscles at the shoulders are as one would expect for a horse trained to draw a chariot, as are those on the hindquarters. On the other hand, these horses, standing 171 centimetres at the withers, are much bigger than life-size when compared to the real horses of antiquity, very few of whom stood higher than 150 centimetres. (One study of skeletons and horse bones from the Roman era gives a range of 142–152 centimetres.) Clearly they were made larger to create an impact when on display; but there are other distortions too. The German romantic poet Goethe noted in the 1780s how ‘up there [on the loggia] they look heavier and from down on the square they look as delicate as deer’. He had spotted that they had been crafted to be seen from below. When one compares the proportions of the St Mark’s horses with actual draught horses, the circumference of the neck is much greater in relation to the body than one would expect, as is the width of the shoulders. The neck is very short and the backs, too, are shorter than that of a living draught horse; but the legs are longer, even though all parts of the leg are in proportion to each other. In real life, the horses would not be able to graze without straddling their legs. This is what makes them look ‘as delicate as deer’ when viewed from below – as it is now, of course, impossible to do. In short, while the horses have been expertly observed, they are also idealized. No one has been able to link them to any known breeds from the ancient Mediterranean world.

  A close-up of one of the heads. Note the short ‘Greek’ mane and the marks which show where the original bridle fitted. A legend suggests the bridles may have been removed when the horses became identified with the unrestrained power of Venice in the fourteenth century. (Ancient Art & Architecture Collection)

  It is worth exploring further why the horses have proved so interesting and why, as I contend, they deserve a whole book to themselves. One of the most important developments in our understanding of classical art is an appreciation of the importance of public display in the ancient world. The use of the visual image, particularly sculpture, was fundamental to life in Greece and Rome. Those living in a city would expect to be surrounded by a mass of images which would range from a single figure in bronze or marble to massive public buildings which might themselves be decorated with sculpture. In short, classical cities diverted a high proportion of their resources, including the skills of trained craftsmen as well as precious metals or fine marbles, into images for public display; the philosopher Aristotle is on record as suggesting that a third of a city’s resources should be spent on its temples. Even Christians succumbed to this need for display, as the opulence of the early Christian basilicas shows. For the classical historian the interest lies in looking at the contexts in which art is displayed, at who was trying to impress whom and what particular symbols they were using. In short, art is not to be seen as a separate sphere of endeavour, but as a mediator between the maker or patron and the public.

  For the ancient observer, a group of four horses would have had an immediate resonance as a symbol of triumph, and this impact would have been far more important than any assessment of them as works of art. Yet as soon as we examine the meaning of ‘triumph’ we find that the horses could as easily have been celebrating a victory in a chariot race at Olympia as a victory by a Roman general over his rivals for power. In both cases a quadriga was an appropriate way of showing off success. So the search for meaning and context is likely to be a demanding one. Another major development in the study of classical art is the blurring of the boundaries between Greek and Roman art once thought to be secure. We have now come to realize that Greek styles were reused by the Romans, often when a specific cultural context was felt to require them. There can be few better examples to make the point than the horses which, over the centuries, have fooled scholars into proclaiming with confidence that they are Greek or Roman.

  Partly because of this ambiguity in the style in which they were cast, the origins of the horses have always aroused intense curiosity. As we shall see, virtually every observer creates or restates a legend about their earlier history. Sometimes these legends conflict with one another;
in some cases they are placed in a chronological order so that the horses move around the ancient Mediterranean in order to satisfy the demands of each! While everyone accepts that they spent several centuries in Constantinople, the facts of how they came there are probably irrecoverable. As the quadrigae were comparatively common monuments (something often forgotten now that only a single example survives) it means that there are many sites where they could have originated, among them Rome, Delphi or, in one account, the island of Chios. Then there have been the attempts to link them to a particular sculptor, whether Phidias of the Parthenon or Lysippus, the sculptor of Alexander the Great. All this adds to the richness of their history.

  However, what makes the story of the horses particularly fascinating is that they have proved transportable. It is the variety and quality of their public settings that make them unique. They have been on display not only in Constantinople but in a major medieval city, Venice, and the capital of Napoleon, Paris. It is hard to think of any comparable work of art whose story is so prominently bound up with its settings. The horses can be linked to many turning points of European history: the founding of Constantinople, its sack in the Fourth Crusade, the years of Venice’s greatness, its fall in 1797, the Paris of Napoleon, the revolutions of 1848 and the creation of Venice as the most romantic city in the world. All these stories are to come; but we must start with the origins of the horses in the classical world.

  2

  CONSTANTINOPLE: THE HORSES’ FIRST HOME?

  A ROMAN EMPEROR HAD TO COMBINE CHARISMA AND superb generalship with administrative brilliance. The challenge was how to present himself as a focus for the many local cultures of an empire which stretched from the Irish Sea in the west to the Euphrates in the east. If he lost the allegiance of local elites, things could easily fall apart, provinces break away and the borders crumble under the weight of invaders. It was a task that called for enormous self-confidence, and the empire was especially lucky in its emperors in the late third and early fourth centuries. First there was Diocletian (emperor from 284 until his abdication in 305), who, after decades of corrosive barbarian attacks which almost destroyed the empire, reorganized its administration and finances and developed more flexible methods of defence. Then there was Constantine, who clawed his way to power through a succession of military victories, one of which, the battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, gave him supremacy in the western empire. This victory, he claimed, was due to the support of the Christian God; he responded by extending toleration and patronage to Christians, so setting the religion on its way to dominance in the Mediterranean and eventually far beyond.

  After he had fought his way to power in the eastern empire as well, Constantine founded a new eastern capital, Constantinople, which was dedicated in 330. It was to become the capital of two later empires, the Byzantine and the Ottoman, the second of which survived into the twentieth century. It was an extraordinary achievement and its endurance was largely the result of Constantine’s own political genius. Not only was he virtually unbeaten as a general, he recognised the importance of following conquest with reconciliation between the victors and the defeated. In order to achieve consensus and good order amoung his peoples, Constantine became adept at maintaining the mystique of monarchy through the manipulation of traditional symbols of imperial rule.

  The emperor Constantine. As is typical of portraits of emperors of this period, the face is idealized to suggest the emperor’s semi-divine nature. (Ancient Art & Architecture Collection)

  The image Constantine used more than any other was that of the sun, whose provision of the warmth and light vital to human existence had long made it a popular symbol among both philosophers and spiritual leaders. Plato had used it to represent ‘the Good’, the value which surpassed all others. Apollo, the god of reason and balance, had the sun as one of his emblems. A cult of Sol Invictus, ‘the unconquered sun’, originally imported from Syria, was very popular among Roman soldiers. A practice of representing the emperor as a sun-god seems to have come into the Roman world via the royal family of Commagene in eastern Anatolia, whose kingdom had been absorbed into the empire in the first century AD. The annexation had been a peaceful one and the Romans maintained good relations with the last king, Antiochus IV, who had been brought back to Rome and treated with respect there. One of Antiochus’ grandsons, Philopappus, had been appointed to the ancient post of consul by the emperor Trajan for the year 109 and then made an honorary magistrate in Athens. In Commagenian tradition the king was associated with the sun, and when Philopappus had himself depicted on the monumental tomb he built for himself in Athens he was shown in a four-horse chariot, with rays coming from his head and his right arm raised, as was usual in depictions of the sun-god Sol. The emperors appear to have adopted the theme. By AD 170 the reliefs on the famous Antonine altar from Ephesus (now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna), which glorify the Roman emperors as saviours of the east, show a second-century emperor, possibly Trajan, ascending to heaven in a chariot of the sun. By the third century emperors such as Caracalla (AD 211–17) were portraying themselves as the sun itself driving a four-horse chariot.

  Constantine followed in this tradition, as one can see in the triumphal arch built in his honour by the Roman Senate in AD 315, which still stands beside the Colosseum in Rome. In reliefs specially designed for the arch, Constantine is shown making his adventus, his ceremonial entry, into Rome after his defeat of Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian Bridge. The emperor is seated in a golden carriage drawn by four horses. On a roundel just above the relief and clearly associated with it, Sol is shown rising, also in a four-horse chariot. An even more precise link between Constantine and the sun is established by a medallion dated to 313, the year after the battle of the Milvian Bridge: here a wreathed Constantine, alongside a radiate Sol, bears a shield on which, again, there appears the sun being carried upwards in a chariot drawn by four horses.

  Yet despite these openly pagan allegiances, Constantine was also seen by the growing Christian community as one of their own. Historians disagree as to whether Constantine was a committed Christian himself or whether his main concern was a political one, to use the church with its well-established hierarchy of bishops in the service of the empire. In any case, as a traditional Roman, Constantine may have believed that he could follow a variety of cults without impropriety; in other words, association with Christians did not mean he had to abandon other cults. He was not even baptized until the very the end of his life. One reason why he could honour the cult of Sol without offending Christians was that the sun had also been integrated into Christian worship. There is an early fresco in Rome of Christ ascending into heaven in the chariot of the sun-god, and the cult day of Sol Invictus was none other than 25 December, the date Christians were to adopt as the birthday of Christ. There is even a record of Christians in the fifth century worshipping the rising sun from the steps of St Peter’s in Rome (to the intense annoyance of Pope Leo the Great, who had hoped they had moved on from such things). Certainly the bishops were quite satisfied by Constantine’s support. One, Eusebius of Caesarea, even wrote a panegyrical life of the emperor in which he made an unlikely analogy between Constantine and Moses.

  The triumphal arch erected in Rome in 315 in celebration of Constantine’s conquest of the city in 312. (Mary Evans Picture Library)

  These reliefs from the arch show Constantine making his triumphal entry into Rome, appropriately in a four-horse chariot, with, on the roundel, his symbol the sun, ascending heavenwards on a similar chariot. (The Art Archive)

  Sol, the Roman sun-god, was always associated with four-horse chariots and is depicted here in a Roman mosaic. (Ancient Art & Architecture Collection)

  Constantine’s presentation of himself as a sun-god was matched by other trappings of divinity through which he kept his distance from his subjects. He was never addressed directly by his name, but by an abstraction such as Your Majesty or Your Serenity. Great audience halls were built inside the imperi
al palaces, their walls lined with varied marbles or shimmering mosaics. (One still stands in Trier in Germany, although it has long since been stripped of its fittings.) Suppliants had to bow before him, presenting their petitions with extravagant formality; the emperor’s reply would be passed down through a hierarchy of officials. He was dressed to impress, in purple, a hue produced by a dye which was extracted in tiny quantities from molluscs and so prohibitively expensive. We read of one council of bishops, held in the audience hall of the imperial palace in Nicaea, where Constantine appeared among them ‘like some heavenly angel of God, his bright mantle shedding lustre like beams of light, shining with the fiery radiance of a purple robe, and decorated with the dazzling brilliance of gold and precious stones’. Those who beheld him were said to be ‘stunned and amazed at the sight – like children who have seen a frightening apparition’.

  Constantine’s foundation of Constantinople on the Hellespont, the strait which ran between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, fits well with this policy of keeping himself above his subjects. From a strategic point of view the ancient Greek city of Byzantium was an excellent choice. It was on the junction of major routes between east and west, and also relatively close to the Danube and Euphrates rivers, borders of the empire which were often under threat. Its position on a promontory meant that it could be walled off and so virtually impregnable, as invaders were to find throughout the city’s history. Philip of Macedon, a master of sieges, had failed to capture it in 340 BC and an earlier Roman emperor, Septimius Severus, had taken two years to subdue it at the end of the second century AD. So here was Constantine at his most pragmatic; but by choosing a relatively remote site, the emperor was also able to maintain his elevated status. As a man whose family originated in the Balkans, he would never have been fully accepted by the ancient senatorial families of Rome. In Byzantium, on the other hand, Constantine was left free to craft his own foundation – and he did not even have to compromise with the church. Byzantium had very little in the way of a Christian heritage when Constantine began expanding it into a capital in the 320s. Even then the building of churches was given low priority and the dedications of those planned for the city were to Divine Peace and Divine Wisdom (the famous church of Santa Sophia, still standing in its rebuilt sixth-century form), dedications which would cause no offence to pagans. The only specifically Christian building which had been completed by the time of Constantine’s death was the Church of the Holy Apostles but as the emperor chose to be buried in it as the ‘thirteenth apostle’, with sepulchres representing the original apostles grouped around him, this was in effect a church dedicated to himself. Constantinople, as its name suggests, was a showcase city for the glorification of the emperor.