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Equestrian statue

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An equestrian statue is a statue of a rider mounted on a horse, from the Latin eques, meaning 'knight', deriving from equus, meaning 'horse'.[1] A statue of a riderless horse is strictly an equine statue. A full-sized equestrian statue is a difficult and expensive object for any culture to produce, and figures have typically been portraits of rulers or, in the Renaissance and more recently, military commanders.

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Statue

Statue

A statue is a free-standing sculpture in which the realistic, full-length figures of persons or animals are carved or cast in a durable material such as wood, metal or stone. Typical statues are life-sized or close to life-size; a sculpture that represents persons or animals in full figure but that is small enough to lift and carry is a statuette or figurine, whilst one more than twice life-size is a colossal statue.

Horse

Horse

The horse is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, Eohippus, into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BCE, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BCE. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term is used to describe horses that have never been domesticated. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, markings, breeds, locomotion, and behavior.

Latin

Latin

Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars supplanted it in common academic and political usage. For most of the time it was used, it would be considered a "dead language" in the modern linguistic definition; that is, it lacked native speakers, despite being used extensively and actively.

Knight

Knight

A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Greek hippeis and hoplite (ἱππεῖς) and Roman eques and centurion of classical antiquity.

History

Khosrow Parviz is standing here. On his left is Ahura Mazda, on his right is Anahita, and below is, Khosrau dressed as a mounted Persian knight riding on his favourite horse, Shabdiz, in the city of, Kermanshah, Iran
Khosrow Parviz is standing here. On his left is Ahura Mazda, on his right is Anahita, and below is, Khosrau dressed as a mounted Persian knight riding on his favourite horse, Shabdiz, in the city of, Kermanshah, Iran

Ancient Greece

Equestrian statuary in the West dates back at least as far as Archaic Greece. Found on the Athenian acropolis, the sixth century BC statue known as the Rampin Rider depicts a kouros mounted on horseback.

Ancient Middle and Far East

A number of ancient Egyptian, Assyrian and Persian reliefs show mounted figures, usually rulers, though no free standing statues are known. The Chinese Terracotta Army has no mounted riders, though cavalrymen stand beside their mounts, but smaller Tang dynasty pottery tomb Qua figures often include them, at a relatively small scale. No Chinese portrait equestrian statues were made until modern times; statues of rulers are not part of traditional Chinese art, and indeed even painted portraits were only shown to high officials on special occasions until the 11th century.[2]

Ancient Rome

This horse head from Suasa was once part of a large equestrian monument. c. 40 AD. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
This horse head from Suasa was once part of a large equestrian monument. c. 40 AD. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Such statues frequently commemorated military leaders, and those statesmen who wished to symbolically emphasize the active leadership role undertaken since Roman times by the equestrian class, the equites (plural of eques) or knights.

There were numerous bronze equestrian portraits (particularly of the emperors) in ancient Rome, but they did not survive because they were melted down for reuse of the alloy as coin, church bells, or other, smaller projects (such as new sculptures for Christian churches); the standing Colossus of Barletta lost parts of his legs and arms to Dominican bells in 1309. Almost the only sole surviving Roman equestrian bronze, the equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, owes its preservation on the Campidoglio, to the popular misidentification of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor, with Constantine the Great, the Christian emperor. The Regisole ("Sun king") was a bronze classical or Late Antique equestrian monument of a ruler, highly influential during the Italian Renaissance but destroyed in 1796 in the wake of the French Revolution. It was originally erected at Ravenna, but moved to Pavia in the Middle Ages, where it stood on a column before the cathedral. A fragment of an equestrian portrait sculpture of Augustus has also survived.

Medieval Europe

Equestrian statues were not very frequent in the Middle ages. Nevertheless, there are some examples, like the Bamberg Horseman (German: Der Bamberger Reiter), in Bamberg Cathedral. Another example is the Magdeburg Reiter, in the city of Magdeburg, that depicts Emperor Otto I. There are a few roughly half-size statues of Saint George and the Dragon, including the famous ones in Prague and Stockholm. The Scaliger Tombs in Verona include Gothic statues at less than life-size. A well-known small bronze Equestrian statuette of Charlemagne (or another emperor) in Paris may be a contemporary portrait of Charlemagne, although its date and subject are uncertain.

Renaissance

After the Romans, no surviving monumental equestrian bronze was cast in Europe until 1415–1450 when Donatello created the heroic bronze Equestrian statue of Gattamelata the condottiere, erected in Padua. In 15th century Italy, this became a form to memorialize successful mercenary generals, as evidenced by the painted equestrian funerary monuments to Sir John Hawkwood and Niccolò da Tolentino in Florence Cathedral, and the Statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni (1478–1488) cast by Verrocchio in Venice.

Leonardo da Vinci had planned a colossal equestrian monument to the Milanese ruler, Francesco Sforza, but was only able to create a clay model. The bronze was reallocated for military use in the First Italian War.[3] Similar sculptures have survived in small scale: The Wax Horse and Rider (c. 1506–1508) is a fragmentary model for an equestrian statue of Charles d'Amboise.[4] The Rearing Horse and Mounted Warrior in bronze was also attributed to Leonardo.

Titian's equestrian portrait of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor of 1548 applied the form again to a ruler. The Equestrian statue of Cosimo I de' Medici (1598) by Giambologna in the center of Florence was a life size representation of the Grand-Duke, erected by his son Ferdinand I.

Ferdinand himself would be memorialized in 1608 with an equestrian statue in Piazza della Annunziata was completed by Giambologna's assistant, Pietro Tacca. Tacca's studio would produce such models for the rulers in France and Spain. His last public commission was the colossal equestrian bronze of Philip IV, begun in 1634 and shipped to Madrid in 1640. In Tacca's sculpture, atop a fountain composition that forms the centerpiece of the façade of the Royal Palace, the horse rears, and the entire weight of the sculpture balances on the two rear legs, and discreetly, its tail, a novel feat for a statue of this size.

Absolutism

During the age of Absolutism, especially in France, equestrian statues were popular with rulers; Louis XIV was typical in having one outside his Palace of Versailles, and the over life-size statue in the Place des Victoires in Paris by François Girardon (1699) is supposed to be the first large modern equestrian statue to be cast in a single piece; it was destroyed in the French Revolution, though there is a small version in the Louvre. The near life-size equestrian statue of Charles I of England by Hubert Le Sueur of 1633 at Charing Cross in London is the earliest large English example, which was followed by many. The equestrian statue of King José I of Portugal, in the Praça do Comércio, was designed by Joaquim Machado de Castro after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and is a pinnacle of Absolutist age statues in Europe. The Bronze Horseman (Russian: Медный всадник, literally "The Copper Horseman") is an iconic equestrian statue, on a huge base, of Peter the Great of 1782 by Étienne Maurice Falconet in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The use of French artists for both examples demonstrates the slow spread of the skills necessary for creating large works, but by the 19th century most large Western countries could produce them without the need to import skills, and most statues of earlier figures are actually from the 19th or early 20th centuries.

Equestrian Statue of Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, built 1696-1703
Equestrian Statue of Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, built 1696-1703

United States

In the colonial era, an equestrian statue of George III by English sculptor Joseph Wilton stood on Bowling Green in New York City. This was the first such statue in the United States, erected in 1770 but destroyed on July 9, 1776, six days after the Declaration of Independence.[5] The 4,000-pound (1,800 kg) gilded lead statue was toppled and cut into pieces, which were made into bullets for use in the American Revolutionary War.[6] Some fragments survived and in 2016 the statue was recreated for a museum.[7]

In the United States, the first three full-scale equestrian sculptures erected were Clark Mills' Andrew Jackson (1852) in Washington, D.C., Henry Kirke Brown's George Washington (1856) in New York City, and Thomas Crawford's George Washington in Richmond, Virginia (1858). Mills was the first American sculptor to overcome the challenge of casting a rider on a rearing horse. The resulting sculpture (of Jackson) was so popular he repeated it for New Orleans, Nashville, and Jacksonville.

Cyrus Edwin Dallin made a specialty of equestrian sculptures of American Indians: his Appeal to the Great Spirit stands before the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial in Boston is a well-known relief including an equestrian portrait.

20th century

Lobey Dosser (and Rank Bajin) on El Fidelio, commemorating Bud Neill
Lobey Dosser (and Rank Bajin) on El Fidelio, commemorating Bud Neill

As the 20th century progressed, the popularity of the equestrian monument declined sharply, as monarchies fell and the military use of horses virtually vanished. The Statue of Queen Elizabeth II riding Burmese in Canada, and statues of Rani Lakshmibai in Gwalior and Jhansi, India, are some of the rare portrait statues with female riders. (Although Joan of Arc has been so portrayed a number of times,[8] and an equestrian statue of Queen Victoria features prominently in George Square, Glasgow). In America, the late 1970s and early 1980s witnessed something of a revival in equestrian monuments, largely in the Southwestern United States. There, art centers such as Loveland, Colorado, Shidoni Foundry in New Mexico, and various studios in Texas once again began producing equestrian sculpture.

Equestrian statue of General Johan Laidoner in Viljandi, Estonia
Equestrian statue of General Johan Laidoner in Viljandi, Estonia

These revival works fall into two general categories, the memorialization of a particular individual or the portrayal of general figures, notably the American cowboy or Native Americans. Such monuments can be found throughout the American Southwest.

In Glasgow, the sculpture of Lobey Dosser on El Fidelio, erected in tribute to Bud Neill, is claimed to be the only two-legged equestrian statue in the world.

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Ahura Mazda

Ahura Mazda

Ahura Mazda, also known as Oromasdes, Ohrmazd, Ahuramazda, Hoormazd, Hormazd, Hormaz and Hurmuz, is the creator deity in Zoroastrianism. He is the first and most frequently invoked spirit in the Yasna. The literal meaning of the word Ahura is "lord", and that of Mazda is "wisdom".

Anahita

Anahita

Anahita is the Old Persian form of the name of an Iranian goddess and appears in complete and earlier form as Aredvi Sura Anahita, the Avestan name of an Indo-Iranian cosmological figure venerated as the divinity of "the Waters" (Aban) and hence associated with fertility, healing and wisdom. There is also a temple named Anahita in Iran. Aredvi Sura Anahita is Ardwisur Anahid or Nahid (ناهید) in Middle and Modern Persian, and Anahit in Armenian. An iconic shrine cult of Aredvi Sura Anahita was – together with other shrine cults – "introduced apparently in the 4th century BCE and lasted until it was suppressed in the wake of an iconoclastic movement under the Sassanids." The symbol of goddess Anahita is the Lotus flower. Lotus Festival is an Iranian festival that is held on the sixth day of July. Holding this festival at this time was probably based on the blooming of lotus flowers at the beginning of summer.

Kermanshah

Kermanshah

Kermanshah, is the capital of Kermanshah Province, located 525 kilometres from Tehran in the western part of Iran. According to the 2016 census, its population is 946,681. A majority of the people of Kermanshah are bilingual in Southern Kurdish and Persian, and the city is the largest Kurdish-speaking city in Iran. Kermanshah has a moderate and mountainous climate. Most of the inhabitants of Kermanshah are Shia Muslims, but there are also Sunni Muslims, Christians, and followers of Yarsanism.

Iran

Iran

Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmenistan to the north, by Afghanistan and Pakistan to the east, and by the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. It covers an area of 1.64 million square kilometres, making it the 17th-largest country. Iran has an estimated population of 86.8 million, making it the 17th-most populous country in the world, and the second-largest in the Middle East. Its largest cities, in descending order, are the capital Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Karaj, Shiraz, and Tabriz.

Archaic Greece

Archaic Greece

Archaic Greece was the period in Greek history lasting from circa 800 BC to the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, following the Greek Dark Ages and succeeded by the Classical period. In the archaic period, Greeks settled across the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, as far as Marseille in the west and Trapezus (Trebizond) in the east; and by the end of the archaic period, they were part of a trade network that spanned the entire Mediterranean.

Acropolis of Athens

Acropolis of Athens

The Acropolis of Athens is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historical significance, the most famous being the Parthenon. The word acropolis is from the Greek words ἄκρον and πόλις. The term acropolis is generic and there are many other acropoleis in Greece. During ancient times the Acropolis of Athens was known also more properly as Cecropia, after the legendary serpent-man, Cecrops, the supposed first Athenian king.

Rampin Rider

Rampin Rider

The Rampin Rider or Rampin Horseman is an equestrian statue from the Archaic Period of Ancient Greece. The statue was masterfully made of marble and has traces of red and black paint.

Kouros

Kouros

Kouros is the modern term given to free-standing Ancient Greek sculptures that depict nude male youths. They first appear in the Archaic period in Greece and are prominent in Attica and Boeotia, with a less frequent presence in many other Ancient Greek territories such as Sicily. Such statues are found across the Greek-speaking world; the preponderance of these were found in sanctuaries of Apollo with more than one hundred from the sanctuary of Apollo Ptoion, Boeotia, alone. These free-standing sculptures were typically marble, but the form is also rendered in limestone, wood, bronze, ivory and terracotta. They are typically life-sized, though early colossal examples are up to 3 meters tall.

Egypt

Egypt

Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip of Palestine and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northeast separates Egypt from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Cairo is the capital and largest city of Egypt, while Alexandria, the second-largest city, is an important industrial and tourist hub at the Mediterranean coast. At approximately 100 million inhabitants, Egypt is the 14th-most populated country in the world.

Assyria

Assyria

Assyria was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC, then to a territorial state, and eventually an empire from the 14th century BC to the 7th century BC.

Relief

Relief

Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term relief is from the Latin verb relevo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane. When a relief is carved into a flat surface of stone or wood, the field is actually lowered, leaving the unsculpted areas seeming higher. The approach requires a lot of chiselling away of the background, which takes a long time. On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject, and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round, especially one of a standing figure where the ankles are a potential weak point, particularly in stone. In other materials such as metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics or papier-mâché the form can be simply added to or raised up from the background. Monumental bronze reliefs are made by casting.

Baltimore

Baltimore

Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, the fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a estimated population of 595,218 in 2023. Baltimore was designated an independent city by the Constitution of Maryland in 1851, and today it is the most populous independent city in the nation. As of 2023, the population of the Baltimore metropolitan area was estimated to be 2,921,051, making it the nation's 20th largest metropolitan area. Baltimore is located about 40 miles (64 km) north northeast of Washington, D.C., making it a principal city in the Washington–Baltimore combined statistical area (CSA), the third-largest CSA in the nation, with a 2023 estimated population of 10,042,122.

Tallest and largest equestrian statue

Second tallest equestrian statue: General Artigas in Minas, Uruguay
Second tallest equestrian statue: General Artigas in Minas, Uruguay

The monument to general Jose Gervasio Artigas in Minas, Uruguay, (18 meters tall, 9 meters long, 150,000 kg) was the world's largest equestrian statue until 2009. The current largest is the 40 meters tall Genghis Khan Equestrian Statue at Tsonjin Boldog, 54 km from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the legendary location where Genghis Khan found the golden whip.

The Marjing Polo Statue, standing in the Marjing Polo Complex, Imphal East, Manipur (122 feet (37 m) tall[a][9][10]), completed in 2022-23, is the world's tallest equestrian statue of a polo player. It depicts ancient Meitei deity Marjing, Meitei horse (Manipuri pony) and Sagol Kangjei (Meitei for 'polo').[11][12]

The world's largest equestrian sculpture, when completed, will be the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota, at a planned 641 feet (195 m) wide and 563 feet (172 m) high, even though only the upper torso and head of the rider and front half of the horse will be depicted. Also on a huge scale, the carvings on Stone Mountain in Georgia, USA, are equestrian sculpture rather than true statues, the largest bas-relief in the world. The world's largest equestrian bronze statues are the Juan de Oñate statue (2006) in El Paso, Texas, a 1911 statue in Altare della Patria in Rome, and the statue of Jan Žižka (1950) in Prague.[13]

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José Gervasio Artigas

José Gervasio Artigas

José Gervasio Artigas Arnal was a soldier and statesman who is regarded as a national hero in Uruguay and the father of Uruguayan nationhood.

Minas, Uruguay

Minas, Uruguay

Minas is the capital of the Lavalleja Department in Uruguay. As of the census of 2011, it is the twelfth-most populated city in the country.

Mongolia

Mongolia

Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of 1,564,116 square kilometres, with a population of just 3.3 million, making it the world's most sparsely populated sovereign nation. Mongolia is the world's largest landlocked country that does not border a closed sea, and much of its area is covered by grassy steppe, with mountains to the north and west and the Gobi Desert to the south. Ulaanbaatar, the capital and largest city, is home to roughly half of the country's population.

Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan, also known as Chinggis Khan, was the founder and first khagan of the Mongol Empire, which later became the largest contiguous land empire in history. Having spent the majority of his life uniting the Mongol tribes, he launched a series of military campaigns which conquered large parts of China and Central Asia.

Marjing Polo Statue

Marjing Polo Statue

The Marjing Polo Statue is a colossal classical equestrian statue of a player of Sagol Kangjei, riding a Meitei horse, constructed at the Marjing Polo Complex, the sacred sports site dedicated to God Marjing, the ancient Meitei deity of polo and horses, in Heingang, Imphal East District, Kangleipak . It is the world's tallest statue of a polo player. It is built to commemorate the game of "modern polo" being originated from Kangleipak.

Marjing Polo Complex

Marjing Polo Complex

The Marjing Polo Complex is a sports complex dedicated to ancient Meitei deity Marjing, Sagol Kangjei and Meitei horse, built in the hilltop of the Heingang Ching, the sacred abode of God Marjing, located in Heingang, Imphal East district, Kangleipak . It houses Marjing Polo Statue, the world's tallest equestrian statue of a polo player.

Manipur

Manipur

Manipur is a state in Northeast India, with the city of Imphal as its capital. It is bounded by the Indian states of Nagaland to the north, Mizoram to the south and Assam to the west. It also borders two regions of Myanmar, Sagaing Region to the east and Chin State to the south. The state covers an area of 22,327 square kilometres (8,621 sq mi). The official and most widely spoken language is Meitei language. Native to the Meitei people, it is also used as a lingua franca by smaller communities, who speak a variety of other Sino-Tibetan languages. Manipur has been at the crossroads of Asian economic and cultural exchange for more than 2,500 years. It connects the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia to Southeast Asia, East Asia, Siberia, regions in the Arctic, Micronesia and Polynesia enabling migration of people, cultures and religions.

Polo

Polo

Polo is a ball game played on horseback, a traditional field sport and one of the world's oldest known team sports. The game is played by two opposing teams with the objective of scoring using a long-handled wooden mallet to hit a small hard ball through the opposing team's goal. Each team has four mounted riders, and the game usually lasts one to two hours, divided into periods called chukkas or "chukkers".

Marjing

Marjing

Marjing is the God of horses, polo, hockey, sports and war in Meitei mythology and religion of Ancient Kangleipak. The guardianship of the north eastern direction is alluded to Marjing and the other directions to Koupalu, Thangching and Wangpulen. According to the legend, he invented the game of polo and introduced it as the national game. He and his divine creature, Samadon Ayangba, reside in the top of the Heingang Ching.

Manipuri Pony

Manipuri Pony

The Manipuri Pony is a traditional Indian breed of small horse or pony from Assam and Manipur in north-eastern India. It appears both in the history and the mythology of Manipur, and was used for warfare and polo. It is believed to have been the polo pony in use in Assam in the mid-nineteenth century when British tea planters first saw polo being played, and the height limits set for polo ponies were based on ponies of this breed. It was very numerous in the early twentieth century, but numbers have since fallen. A breed society was established in 1977, and a breed standard was drawn up by the Indigenous Horse Society of India in 2009.

Meitei language

Meitei language

Meitei, also known as Manipuri, is a Tibeto-Burman language of northeast India. It is spoken by around 1.8 million people, predominantly in the state of Manipur, but also by smaller communities in the rest of the country and in parts of neighbouring Myanmar and Bangladesh. It is native to the Meitei people, and within Manipur, it serves as an official language and a lingua franca. It was used as a court language in the historic Manipur Kingdom and is presently included among the 22 scheduled languages of India.

Crazy Horse Memorial

Crazy Horse Memorial

The Crazy Horse Memorial is a mountain monument under construction on privately held land in the Black Hills, in Custer County, South Dakota, United States. It will depict the Oglala Lakota warrior Crazy Horse, riding a horse and pointing to his tribal land. The memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski. It is operated by the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit organization.

Other statues of particular note

  • Memorial at Vlamertinge to commemorate the one million horses killed in WW1
  • Memorial of Captain Edward Cheney at Gaddesby showing him on a dying horse - he had five horses shot out from under him at the Battle of Waterloo and led the charge of the Royal Scots Greys - the only equestrian statue in a British church
  • Memorial to "Crimean Bob" the last horse to die following service at the Battle of Waterloo, in Cahir
  • The Kelpies, pair of 30m high horse heads near Falkirk in Scotland

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Vlamertinge

Vlamertinge

Vlamertinge is a village in the Belgian province of West Flanders and a borough of the city of Ypres. The village center of Vlamertinge lies just outside the city center of Ypres, along the main road N38 to the nearby town of Poperinge.

Edward Cheney

Edward Cheney

Edward Hawkins Cheney CB (1778–1848) was a 19th century British soldier and hero of the Battle of Waterloo. His unique claim to fame was that he had five separate horses killed or wounded under him during the battle. His grave is said to be the only equestrian statue within a British church and is probably the only statue showing a dying horse in Britain.

Gaddesby

Gaddesby

Gaddesby is a village and civil parish in the Melton borough of Leicestershire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 762. It is located around 5.5 miles (8.9 km) southwest of Melton Mowbray and 8 miles (13 km) northeast of Leicester.

Battle of Waterloo

Battle of Waterloo

The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo. A French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by two of the armies of the Seventh Coalition. One of these was a British-led coalition consisting of units from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hanover, Brunswick, and Nassau, under the command of the Duke of Wellington. The other was composed of three corps of the Prussian army under the command of Field Marshal von Blücher. The battle marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The battle was contemporaneously known as the Battle of Mont Saint-Jean (France) or La Belle Alliance.

Royal Scots Greys

Royal Scots Greys

The Royal Scots Greys was a cavalry regiment of the British Army from 1707 until 1971, when they amalgamated with the 3rd Carabiniers to form the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.

Cahir

Cahir

Cahir is a town in County Tipperary in Ireland. It is also a civil parish in the barony of Iffa and Offa West.

The Kelpies

The Kelpies

The Kelpies are 30-metre-high (98 ft) horse-head sculptures depicting kelpies, located between Falkirk and Grangemouth, standing next to a new extension to the Forth and Clyde Canal, and near River Carron, in The Helix, a new parkland project built to connect sixteen communities in the Falkirk Council Area, Scotland. The sculptures were designed by sculptor Andy Scott and were completed in October 2013. The sculptures form a gateway at the eastern entrance to the Forth and Clyde canal, and the new canal extension built as part of The Helix land transformation project. The Kelpies are a monument to horse-powered heritage across Scotland.

Falkirk

Falkirk

Falkirk is a town in the Central Lowlands of Scotland, historically within the county of Stirlingshire. It lies in the Forth Valley, 23+1⁄2 miles northwest of Edinburgh and 20+1⁄2 miles (33 km) northeast of Glasgow.

Hoof-position symbolism

Equestrian statue of Confederate General James Longstreet on his horse Hero in Pitzer Woods at Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg, PA
Equestrian statue of Confederate General James Longstreet on his horse Hero in Pitzer Woods at Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg, PA

In many parts of the world, an urban legend states that if the horse is rearing (both front legs in the air), the rider died in battle; one front leg up means the rider was wounded in battle; and if all four hooves are on the ground, the rider died outside battle. A rider depicted as dismounted and standing next to their horse often indicates that both were killed during battle.[14] For example, Richard the Lionheart is memorialised, mounted passant, outside the Palace of Westminster by Carlo Marochetti; the former died 11 days after his wound, sustained in siege, turned septic. A survey of 15 equestrian statues in central London by the Londonist website found that nine of them corresponded to the supposed rule, and considered it "not a reliable system for reading the fate of any particular rider".[15]

In the United States, the rule is especially held to apply to equestrian statues commemorating the American Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg,.[16][17] One such statue was erected in 1998 in Gettysburg National Military Park, and is of James Longstreet, who is featured on his horse with one foot raised, even though Longstreet was not wounded in that battle. However, he was seriously wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness the following year. This is not a traditional statue, as it does not place him on a pedestal. One writer claims that any correlation between the positioning of hooves in a statue and the manner in which a Gettysburg soldier died is a coincidence.[18] There is no proper evidence that these hoof positions correlate consistently with the rider's history but some hold to the belief regardless.[19][20]

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James Longstreet

James Longstreet

James Longstreet was one of the foremost Confederate generals of the American Civil War and the principal subordinate to General Robert E. Lee, who called him his "Old War Horse". He served under Lee as a corps commander for most of the battles fought by the Army of Northern Virginia in the Eastern Theater, and briefly with Braxton Bragg in the Army of Tennessee in the Western Theater.

Gettysburg National Military Park

Gettysburg National Military Park

The Gettysburg National Military Park protects and interprets the landscape of the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. Located in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the park is managed by the National Park Service. The GNMP properties include most of the Gettysburg Battlefield, many of the battle's support areas during the battle, and several other non-battle areas associated with the battle's "aftermath and commemoration," including the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Many of the park's 43,000 American Civil War artifacts are displayed in the Gettysburg Museum and Visitor Center.

Palace of Westminster

Palace of Westminster

The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north bank of the River Thames in the City of Westminster, in central London, England.

Carlo Marochetti

Carlo Marochetti

Baron Pietro Carlo Giovanni Battista Marochetti was an Italian-born French sculptor who worked in France, Italy and Britain. He completed many public sculptures, often in a neo-classical style, plus reliefs, memorials and large equestrian monuments in bronze and marble. In 1848, Marochetti settled in England, where he received commissions from Queen Victoria. Marochetti received great recognition during his lifetime, being made a baron in Italy and was awarded the Legion of Honour by the French government.

American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union and the Confederacy, the latter formed by states that had seceded. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which was widely believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction.

Battle of Gettysburg

Battle of Gettysburg

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. In the battle, Union Major General George Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, halting Lee's invasion of the North. The battle involved the largest number of casualties of the entire war and is often described as the war's turning point due to the Union's decisive victory and concurrence with the Siege of Vicksburg.

Battle of the Wilderness

Battle of the Wilderness

The Battle of the Wilderness was fought on May 5–7, 1864, during the American Civil War. It was the first battle of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Virginia Overland Campaign against General Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The fighting occurred in a wooded area near Locust Grove, Virginia, about 20 miles (32 km) west of Fredericksburg. Both armies suffered heavy casualties, nearly 29,000 in total, a harbinger of a war of attrition by Grant against Lee's army and, eventually, the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia. The battle was tactically inconclusive, as Grant disengaged and continued his offensive.

Pedestal

Pedestal

A pedestal or plinth is a support at the bottom of a statue, vase, column, or certain altars. Smaller pedestals, especially if round in shape, may be called socles. In civil engineering, it is also called basement. The minimum height of the plinth is usually kept as 45 cm. It transmits loads from superstructure to the substructure and acts as the retaining wall for the filling inside the plinth or raised floor.

Source: "Equestrian statue", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 15th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equestrian_statue.

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Notes
  1. ^ Many news websites mislead the height as "110 feet", "120 feet", etc.
References
  1. ^ Wheelock, Frederic M., The Official Wheelock's Latin Website, retrieved 2009-04-03
  2. ^ Stuart, Jan & Rawski, Evelyn Sakakida. Worshiping the ancestors: Chinese commemorative portraits, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-4263-4, ISBN 978-0-8047-4263-4
  3. ^ Kemp, Martin (2007). Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man. Oxford University Press. pp. 201–203. ISBN 9780199207787.
  4. ^ The statue now in London putatively by Leonardo himself according to Carlo Pedretti.
  5. ^ "Equestrian Statues". Art and Progress. 4 (8): 995–998. 1913. JSTOR 20560907.
  6. ^ "King George's Head". The Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. Archived from the original on March 22, 2015. Retrieved August 24, 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  7. ^ Dunlap, David W. (October 20, 2016). "Long-Toppled Statue of King George III to Ride Again, From a Brooklyn Studio". The New York Times. Retrieved August 24, 2019.
  8. ^ Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) (1412–1431): Statues and Monuments
  9. ^ "Union Home and Cooperation Minister Shri Amit Shah inaugurated and laid the foundation stone of 21 development projects worth Rs. 1,311 crore at Moirang, Manipur today". pib.gov.in. Retrieved 2023-01-10. Shri Amit Shah inaugurated Medical College of worth Rs. 46 Crore at Churachandpur and unveils 122 feet tall Marjing polo statue of worth Rs. 39 crore
  10. ^ "Manipur: Union Home Minister Amit Shah inaugurates 122-feet-high Marjing Polo statue". India Today NE. 2023-01-06. Retrieved 2023-01-10.
  11. ^ "Manipur: Amit Shah will unveil the tallest statue of the polo player, will hoist the tricolor at the historic site - News8Plus-Realtime Updates On Breaking News & Headlines". 2023-01-06. Retrieved 2023-01-10.
  12. ^ "World's tallest polo statue to be constructed in Mnp | Nagaland Post". Retrieved 2023-01-10.
  13. ^ World's Largest Equestrian Bronze Statue Installed
  14. ^ Dupré, Judith (2007). Monuments: America's History in Art and Memory (1st ed.). New York: Random House. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-4000-6582-0. OCLC 70046094.
  15. ^ "Do London's Horse Statues Follow a Hidden Code?". 2016-07-20.
  16. ^ Mikkelson, Barbara (2 August 2007). "Statue of Limitations". Snopes.com.
  17. ^ "Gettysburg Monument Series – the Horse Hoof Question: An Enduring Myth". 20 July 2012.
  18. ^ Adams, Cecil (6 October 1989). "In statues, does the number of feet the horse has off the ground indicate the fate of the rider?". The Straight Dope.
  19. ^ Hiskey, Daven (12 February 2013). "The Way a Soldier's Horse is Portrayed in an Equestrian Statue Has Nothing to Do With How The Soldier Died". Today I Found Out.
  20. ^ Wilde, Robert. "Historical Myths: Common Codes Supposedly Hidden In Statues". About.com.
Bibliography
  • Joachim Poeschke, Thomas Weigel, Britta Kusch-Arnhold (eds.), Praemium Virtutis III – Reiterstandbilder von der Antike bis zum Klassizismus. Rhema-Verlag, Münster 2008, ISBN 978-3-930454-59-4
  • Raphael Beuing: Reiterbilder der Frührenaissance – Monument und Memoria. Rhema-Verlag, Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-930454-88-4
External links
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