Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/627

 1869.] TJie Bronze Horses of Venice. 503 THE BEONZE HORSES OF VENICE. EVERY American who visits the beautiful " Bride of the Adriatic," as Venice is called, must be struck with the silence that reigns in that city of the sea, owing to the total absence of wheeled vehicles. No sound of travel is heard from morn till night save the "cheep," "cheep," of the oars of the gondola as it shoots off from beneath 3'our window, black and mysterious, like some flitting shadow of a dream. The sound of horses' hoofs which in our own crowded cities is so apt to confound us with that ceaseless clatter, is here never heard ; and indeed it may be said that there are but four horses in all Venice, and those the oldest in the world, the bronze steeds of the eminent sculptor, Lysippus, which stand on the portico of St. Mark. The history of those horses is highly interesting. They are generally sup- posed to be the work of Lysippus, who lived three hundred years before Christ. They first adorned the pediment of one of those classic temples of Corinth. But Greece fell beneath the power of Rome, and Corinth was destroj'ed by the Con- sul Mummius. The four bronze horses were secured to grace the barbarous triumph, and were, in 146 years before Christ, placed on the Temple of Peace, at Rome. Constantine the Great, on removing the seat of Roman Empire to Byzantium, to which he gave his name, had the four bronze horses to adorn this new capital, Constantinople. Greece and Rome both in turn crumbled to decay ; the latter falling victim to the barbarous hordes that surrounded it. This decline of Roman empire was the impelling cause of the birth of Venice as Queen of the Seas. In the year of our Lord 451 the conquering sword of Attila destroyed Verona, Mantua, &c, whose inhabitants in numbers sought refuge in the islands of the Adriatic, and thus grew up the Venice which was to rank high among the chronicled cities of history. About the middle of the thirteenth century Alexis was dethroned by his subjects, who held possession of his capi- tal, Constantinople. His son applied to the then powerful maritime republic of Venice for assistance, and he received it. Never was support given with more willingness, for Venice saw the oppor- tunity to expand her growing power, and so the capture of Constantinople was rapidly followed by the conquest of the isles of Greece. The four bronze horses again changed quarters and Venice now boasted her first importa- tion in that line. They were placed on the portico of the magnificent Church of St. Mark, facing the Piazza di San Marco. Here they rested until that child of fate, Napoleon I., in his plun- dering career of conquest, took them, with the choicest art-gems of his van- quished enemies, to enrich the French capital. The four bronze horses were set upon the triumphal arch in the Place du Carousal at Paris, >y his order pre- vious to 1815. This triumphal Arch du Carousel, a veritable chef d'ceuure of elegance and good taste, stands at the entrance of the Court of the Tuileries. Napoleon ordered the architects Percier and Fontaine to build it in 1806, to celebrate the glory of the French armies. But the star of his destinj- went out, and by the treaty of 1815, the Allied Powers restored the four bronze horses to Venice, where any of our readers may see them in their old position, on the Portico of St. Mark's, after a record of over two thousand years duration ! There, it is to be hoped, they may remain for many centuries to come, undisturbed by the political changes of Peace, and in the event of War To snuff, unmoved, the battle from afar.