Horses of Saint Mark - Venezia, Italy
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N 45° 26.068 E 012° 20.359
33T E 291889 N 5034659
The replicas of the four Horses of Saint Mark stand on the loggia above the porch of St Mark's Basilica in Venezia, Italy.
Waymark Code: WMWYPP
Location: Veneto, Italy
Date Posted: 10/31/2017
Views: 8
The Horses of Saint Mark (Italian: Cavalli di San Marco), also known as the Triumphal Quadriga, is a set of Roman bronze statues of four horses, originally part of a monument depicting a quadriga (a four-horse carriage used for chariot racing).
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; the famous Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome (c. 175 AD) provides a point of comparison. They were probably created to top a triumphal arch or some other grand building, perhaps commissioned by the Emperor Septimus Severus. They may originally have been made for the Eastern capital of Constantinople, and certainly reached there later.
The horses were placed on the facade, on the loggia above the porch, of St Mark's Basilica in Venice after the sack of Constantinople in 1204. They remained there until looted by Napoleon in 1797 but were returned in 1815. The horses remained in place over St Mark's until the early 1980s, when the ongoing damage from growing air pollution forced their replacement with exact copies. Since then, the originals have been on display inside the basilica.
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