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Showing posts with label Fourth Crusade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fourth Crusade. Show all posts

June 5, 2011

Continued Short History of the Four Bronze Horses in Venice (Part Three)

Four Horses in St. Mark's Basilica in Venice 
by Judge Arthur Tompkins, ARCA Lecturer

But principal among the riches plundered were the Four Horses.

They are most likely of Roman origin, although some argue for an older, Greek origin.

Originally accompanied by a quadriga, or chariot, they were displayed in the Hippodrome of Constantinople, having arrived there centuries before, from Rome.


A recent reconstruction of the starting boxes for the Hippodrome’s chariot races shows one possible location of the horses.

They are made largely of copper, with tin added, which suggests a Roman rather than Hellenistic origin, although Chamberlain categorically states that they are of Greek origin. They may have once stood on the Arch of Trajan in Rome.

The collars were added in 1204 by the Venetians to conceal where the heads had been severed to facilitate their transportation by ship from Constantinople to Venice.

The fate of the quadriga is unknown, but the leader of the Venetians during the Fourth Crusade, the Doge Dandolo, arranged for the four horses to be installed on the pediment above the entry to the Byzantine-style St Marks’ Basilica, the Cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Venice, in 1254.

The Basilica had been consecrated in 1094, and the consciously Byzantine style of the building reflected both the favoured status Venice had long enjoyed in its dealings with the Byzantine Empire – Venice was given the title “favourite daughter of Byzantium” in 1000 by Basil II - but also the Venetians’ “pride in possessing an edifice which shared the same magnificent architectural design as the ancient basilicas of the twelve Apostles and of St Sophia in Constantinople for the Doge’s church and for their patron saint’s mausoleum.”

The choice of the Horses as the principal symbolic booty was deliberate:
“The Horses were part of the spoils allotted to the Venetians – about a third of the rich booty accumulated by the Crusaders and gathered together in the three churches in Constantinople – and were already designated as such before the decisive attack took place. ... The choice of the Horses of San Marco already in 1204 and their transfer to Venice can now be seen as undoubtedly a conscious act to witness the triumph of the Republic – an idea conceived by [Doge] Enrico Dandolo who knew Constantinople extremely well since he had been the Venetian ambassador at the court of the Byzantine emperor. ... The ambition to have inherited the glory of Rome, which had indeed been nurtured by many other ancient cities during the Middle Ages, was to be commemorated in Venice with a monument which was both an expression of triumph and of the Roman spirit. No such combination seems loftier and more solemn to us than the Horses of San Marco which formerly watched majestically over the city of Constantinople.”
The horses are secular, with no or little religious connotations – why then were they displayed on a Church? Taylor notes that the Church had, throughout the so-called Dark Ages – the period of the Middle Ages from around the fall of Rome in the 5th century, through to the creation and flowering of the Italian republics, a vital role to play in preserving art and culture and the Renaissance:

“It was, moreover, the responsibility of the Church to see that during the dark night of barbarism the lamp of classical learning was not totally extinguished. The Christian communism of the Middle Ages had put an end to private wealth, and Europe was not to see a bourgeoisie again until the formation of the Italian republics. Only the hereditary rulers and the prelates of the Church were in a position to patronize the arts.”

Tomorrow read the final post in this series on the Four Horses.

June 4, 2011

More on the History of the Four Horses of the Basilica San Marco, Venice (Part II)

Eugène Delacroix, The Taking of Constantinople by the Crusaders (April 12, 1204),
Salon of 1841, Entered the Musée du Louvre in 1885

by Judge Arthur Tompkins, ARCA Lecturer

The Fourth Crusade in its Venetian transports arrived off Constantinople in late June 1203. The siege occupied many months, but finally the ‘Latins’ entered the city on April 13, 1204.

As Wilhelm Treue comments in his book, Art Plunder: The Fate of Works of Art in War and Unrest (John Day, New York, 1961):
“Old men, women, and children, carrying crosses and holy images, went to meet the victorious troops, but there was no restraining their lust for blood and plunder; they were Crusaders no longer; they were plunderers such as Europe had never known till that day. Whoever stood in their way was killed..... the forty richest cities on earth could not equal the riches which Byzantium now lost to her conquerors. All this was now distributed throughout Europe and added unimaginable riches to the legacy of antiquity and the medieval Eastern Empire. Venice benefited chiefly, but the whole of Europe as far as the British Isles and Scandinavia, wherever relations and friends of any crusader were to be found, shared in this amazing windfall. Every Crusader of any rank found himself in possession of a fortune on April 13, 1204. ... An eclipse, taken to be a sign on the wrath of God, put an end to the looting on April 16.”
Speros Vryonis in Byzantium and Europe (Harcourt Brace, 1967) gives a vivid account of the sack of Constantinople by the Frankish and Venetian Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, and comments:
The estrangement of East and West, which had proceeded over the centuries, culminated in the horrible massacre that accompanied the conquest of Constantinople. The Greeks were convinced that even the Turks, had they taken the city, would not have been as cruel as the Latin Christians. The defeat of Byzantium, already in a state of decline, accelerated political degeneration so that the Byzantines eventually became an easy prey to the Turks. The Crusading movement thus resulted, ultimately, in the victory of Islam, a result which was of course the exact opposite of its original intention.
Thus occurred uncontrolled looting of what was then the grandest and richest city in Europe, the repository of many centuries of art and culture.

The Tetrarchs, Venice
Before turning to consider the travels of the Four Horses, they were of course not the only things taken from that city. Also ending up in Venice were the Tetrarchs, built into a corner of the Basilica of San Marco, adjacent to the Porta della Carta.

In addition, Francis Henry Taylor notes in his 1948 book, The Taste of Angels, that the marble facing and incrustation was prised off the exterior of Hagia Sophia and used as ballast in the Venetian ships before being used to continue the decoration of the basilica.

Overall, the looting was so widespread, Fernando Báez writes in his book, A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern Day Iraq (Atlas & Co, 2008):
“ ... that almost all the churches of Europe came to have treasure or relics from Constantinople. According to the historian Steven Runciman, ‘the sack of Constantinople has not parallel in history ... There was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade.”