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Horses Of Saint Mark

Horses of Saint Mark are four statues of ancient horses of copper cast ^History

The four horses adorned the Hippodrome of Constantinople , that the Emperor Constantine erected in the new capital of the Empire from 330.

In 1204 , after the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade , the Doge Enrico Dandolo had them transported to Venice. They were installed on the facade of the Basilica San Marco in 1254.

In 1797 , Napoleon Bonaparte , then commanding general of the army of Italy Directory takes Venice during the first Italian Campaign (1796-1797) and took away the horses. Became emperor , he had installed the gates of the Tuileries , and then the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel , built in Paris in honor of the Grand Army , between 1807 and 1809 .

Quadriga of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in Paris , copies of the nineteenth ^century.

In 1815 , after the Battle of Waterloo and the fall of Napoleon , the horses went to Venice by the Austrians. They are then replaced on the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel by copies. Returning the original facade of the Basilica San Marco.

In the 1980s , the original horses were placed in the museum of the Basilica and replaced by replicas to preserve the air pollution. Already tarnished after twenty years, the aftershocks have been cleaned and restored in 2006 .

Description

Up replicas in Venice

The horses of San Marco are the only remaining elements of the chariot of bronze that remains of antiquity.

Analyses performed during a world tour of exhibitions in the early 1980s showed that the horses are in bronze at a very low content of tin, copper almost 98% pure, alloyed with approximately 1% tin and 1% lead , metal casting extremely difficult and lacking in fine detail fill the molds, while the bronze antique is usually composed of 85% copper , 10% of tin , a small amount of lead and other impurities. Each horse is different, the heads were cast aside and are perhaps not to their place of origin. The necklaces , which hide the junction, are more recent, but certainly a replica of ancient elements ^{Notes, references}