The Travelling Horses of Venice

NORVAL RICHARDSON

First Secretary of the American Embassy at Rome

DURING all the years of the Great War, the Italian people had to stand by and watch the gradual disappearance from view of their most treasured works of art. This was especially true in the north of Italy, where the Austrian air raids were serious and incessant.

Among the first things miraculously to disappear were the great paintings in the Venetian palaces and galleries. Everything that could be moved in the way of a picture, or a fresco, was taken down and shipped to some town in the interior which was deemed a safe refuge from bombs.

In many of the small and remote villages the government officials met with considerable opposition when they made preparations to remove pictures which, in decorating the altars of the churches, had become a part of the religious life of the villages in question. Crowds gathered about the churches, and protested. If the Madonna, to whom they were accustomed to offer their daily prayers, were to be taken from them, what hope had they of any further protection from her?

They were, they argued, left absolutely to the mercy of the enemy! Nothing could save them now! In some cases the officials had to delay removing, a picture of a particularly popular saint or Madonna, until reasoning and explanation had had a calming effect on the people.

Sometimes the protests were so violent that the Madonna had to be left exposed to the danger of destruction from the air. Her worshippers could not be persuaded to be separated from her. If she had to suffer from the barbarians of the north, they would suffer with her.

At least they could die together.

It was not an unusual sight, in 1915, to see religious processions going to the station, the priceless painting of the Madonna carried in front, surrounded by candles, flowers, and a faithful band of worshippers. Sometimes the crowd did not leave, even when the picture had been placed on the train and the car sealed; they waited—many kneeling—until the train had moved off.

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When it was finally decided to send the famous Greek horses from St. Mark's in Venice to Rome, for safe keeping, many Venetians shook their heads and said that it was an evil omen. There was a strong superstition—the fruit of many bitter centuries—to the effect that these old Greek horses only travelled with conquerors. If the horses had to leave Venice it meant that Venice was surely doomed.

THE voyage of the horses, and of the two great statues that accompanied them to Rome, was made in royal state. With the horses travelled the equestrian statue of Colleone (generally considered to be the finest equestrian statue in the world), while Donatello's impressive statue of Gattamelata, the historic old Italian, joined them at Padua. From every station telegrams were sent back to Venice announcing the safe progress of the calvacade and the satisfactory condition of health of all the statues concerned.

The journey to Rome was accomplished without accident. Once there, the statues were immediately carried to a safe resting place, the Palazzo di Venezia—the palace which, before the war, was the Austrian Embassy to the Vatican—and placed in cellars deep down in the foundations of the building. There the statues remained until the signing of the armistice. Lately, however, anticipating their return journey to Venice, the horses and statues were brought out and placed in the courtyard of the Palazzo di Venezia.

THE horses do not lose by close inspection. As a matter of fact, they are more impressive than when they were decorating the portal of St. Mark's. Their harmony, their elegance, their vivacity, only increases when seen near by. One realizes more than ever why the great Conquerors wanted to carry them home. They are steeds well worthy of the celestial quadriga of Phoebus Apollo! They convince one more and more that every statue which left the hands of the early Greek sculptors was an inspired work of art. In spite of the thousands of scratches which show the discomforts of the horses' travels, in spite of the streaks of corroding copper and the remnants of the coat of gold which covered them, they are still the most beautiful horses that man has ever made—veritable horses of the sun.

Looking at them one is tempted to wander off into conjecture as to their origin. In what happy island did they gallop first? Alas, the authorities are conflicting. One of them tells us that they were the work of Lysippus, of Chios; that they were found there by the Emperor Theodosius when they were celebrating their three hundredth birthday, and that he drove them all the way to Byzantium. Another tells us that the Romans found them at Corinth, drove them to Rome and from there Constantine drove them again to. Byzantium. In any case, they reached Constantinople, in one way or another, for, when the Venetians entered there under Dandolo, their conquering Doge, in 1204, they were decorating the imperial tribune of the Hippodrome.

Dandolo carried them back to Venice with him, put them in the Arsenal and, coming finally to the conclusion that they were really the horses of Heaven, made a gift of them to St. Mark's. Here they rested during six centuries, though always ready, at a moment's notice, to spring off into the air and gallop away on another journey.

And so they did, in 1798, when Napoleon, wishing to immortalize the victory of Austerlitz, carried them to Paris and placed them on the Arc de Triomphe in the Place du Carousel. But even here they did not long remain. Eighteen years was the length of their stay, for Francis II of Austria insisted upon having them once more in Venice to celebrate Austria's triumph over Italy. And here they remained another century, until, in 1916, they once more began their travels, this time from Venice to Rome.

NOW, resting in a garden where Roman sunlight warms them, they await another voyage—let us hope their last—back to the portal of St. Mark's, which we have come to think of as their logical resting place.

Near them, under the covered loggia of the Palazzo di Venezia, is the heroic statue of Colleone. Though Ruskin has said that there is no more glorious sculpture existing in the world than this equestrian statue, one is almost inclined to find it faulty when seen in such close contact with the horses of Heaven.

Even though Andrea Verrocchio, in 1481, produced this consummate statue (many say that Leonardo da Vinci had a great deal to do with designing it) one cannot help noticing that it misses, now that it is viewed at close range, a certain fineness which one never missed when it stood on its pedestal at Venice.

And the same objection might be made to the statue by Donatello—executed in the 15th Century—of Gattamelata, which now stands at the other end of the corridor of the Palazzo di Venezia.

On their pedestals, and in their Venetian settings, these two equestrian statues seem magnificent, faultless, but, beside the horses of Heaven they give one the discouraging feeling that the modem sculptors are still a long way from the masters of ancient Greece.