A memorable place is San Marco Square in Venice. there are four bronze horses over the main doors to the cathedral. They were brought inside because weather and birds damage bronze which is supposed to be washed and waxed four times a year. Four replacements were erected and the originals are inside, out of the weather.
The sculptures date from classical antiquity and have been implausibly attributed to the 4th century BC Greek sculptor Lysippos. A date in the 2nd or 3rd century AD is considered far more likely Although called bronze, analysis suggests that, as they are at least 96.67% copper so they should be seen as an impure copper rather than bronze. The high purity copper was probably chosen instead of bronze to give a more satisfactory mercury gilding. The horses are not solid but hollow.
They may be the “four gilt horses that stood above the Hippodrome” that “came from the island of Chios under Theodosius II” mentioned in the 8th- or early 9th-century Parastaseis syntomoi chronikai.They were still there in 1204, when they were looted by Venetian forces as part of the sack of the capital of the Byzantine Empire in the Fourth Crusade. The collars on the four horses were added in 1204 to obscure where the animals’ heads had been severed to allow them to be transported from Constantinople to Venice. Shortly after the Fourth Crusade, Doge Enrico Dandolo sent the horses to Venice, where they were installed on the terrace of the façade of St Mark’s Basilica in 1254. Petrarch admired them there.
In 1797, Napoleon had the horses forcibly removed from the basilica and carried off to Paris, where they were used in the design of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel together with a quadriga.
In 1815 the horses were returned to Venice by Captain Dumaresq. He had fought at the Battle of Waterloo and was with the allied forces in Paris where he was selected, by the Emperor of Austria, to take the horses down from the Arc de Triomphe and return them to their original place at St Mark’s in Venice. For the skillful manner in which he performed this work the Emperor gave him a gold snuff box with his initials in diamonds on the lid.
Conservation-restoration of the Horses of Saint Mark.
The horses remained in place over St Mark’s until the early 1980s, when the ongoing damage from exposure to the air, to bird dropping rowing air pollution forced their replacement with exact copies. Since then, the originals have been on display just inside the basilica.
Seeing them is worth a trip to Venice but there are many, many reasons to visit and lots of unique things to see. In addition, it’s a special place on the planet and just being there is good for the soul.
In a movie scene in San Marco square Shelly winters was shown reflecting and thinking with an enigmatic smile. Someone said: “you look so far away” She replied: “I’ve never been closer”. that’s the effect of San Marco and part of it is the four horses atop the entrance to Saint Marks.
So go to Venice. Go to San Marco Square. Study the four horses that have beguiled us for two thousand years. Feel the peace.
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