Originally part of a monument depicting a quadriga - a four-horse carriage used for chariot racing - the life-size "bronze" sculptures are actually nearly one-hundred percent copper. First recorded as having been part of a sculptural group that stood above the Hippodrome of Constantinople for centuries, they were looted when Venetian forces sacked the capital of the Byzantine Empire in 1204. Transported to Venice, they would be installed on the façade of the Basilica di San Marco. More than five hundred years later, in 1797, his forces having conquered the Venetian Republic, Napoléon ordered the horses removed from the basilica and carried off to Paris. During the First French Empire they were included in the quadriga that surmounted the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, which was built between 1806 and 1808 to the designs of Percier and Fontaine. But after the Emperor's final defeat at Waterloo, the horses were returned to Venice and reinstalled on the façade of San Marco's. There they remained until the 1980s when ongoing damage from air pollution necessitated their removal. They were replaced with exact copies and the originals are now kept on display inside the basilica.
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| Photograph by GSB Photography. |
