gcls_WFP_873

[image of several horse statues in front of a building]

THE CELEBRATED BRONZE HORSES OF ST. MARK'S, WHICH, SINCE THE BEGINNING OF
THE PRESENT WAR BETWEEN ITALY AND AUSTRIA, HAVE BEEN REMOVED
FROM VENICE, SO AS TO BE SAFE FROM AVIATOR AND CANNON

No small part of the world's history is connected with the four magnificent bronze horses
which stand over the main portal of St. Mark's. It is said to be almost certain that once
they adorned the triumphal arch of Nero, from which they were removed to adorn those of
Trajan and subsequent emperors. When Constantine founded Constantinople he took them
to adorn the hippodrome of his New Rome, from whence they were carried from Venice and
placed in their present position. There they remained until 1797, when Napoleon took them
to Paris to adorn his triumphal arch in teh Place de Carrousel. In 1815 the Austrians, to
whom Venice was assigned, restored them to St. Mark's. As one views St. Mark's main
facade across the piazza, he feels with Ruskin: "It is a confusion of delights, amidst which
the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the
St. Mark's Lion; lifted on a blue field, covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstacy, the
press of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in
flashes of wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-
bound before they fell, and the sea nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst. Be-
tween that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval! There is a type of it in
the birds that haunt them, for, instead of restless crows, hoarse-voiced [, written in ink] and sable-winged,
drifiting on the bleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves that nestle among
the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living plumes, changing at every
motion of the tints, hardly less lovely, that has stood changed [ink blot] for 700 years."

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