Equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice Italy

CountryItaly
Town:Venice
Year of creation:1488
Rider(s):Colleoni, Bartolomeo

(1400–1475) became general-in-chief of the armies of the Venetian Republic in 1455. Colleoni had a mixed career fighting for Venice, switching sides from Venice to Milan and from Milan to Venice again. Though his allegiance changed several times, he never switched sides before his term of service was over. Colleoni also never sacked villages and cities like other condottieri did. When he died, he left a large sum to the Republic of Venice for the Turkish war, with a request to erect an equestrian statue of himself in the Piazza San Marco, ‘in front of the St Mark’. However, no monument of any kind was allowed in this square. According to the traditional story, the Serene Republic amended the will to ‘in front of the Grand College of St Mark’, thus ensuring that the state did not lose so large a sum of money.*
Sculptor(s):Verrocchio and Leopardi

Andrea del Verrocchio (1435 – 1488) was an Italian painter and sculptor. His pupils included Leonardo da Vinci
Alessandro Leopardi (1466 – 1512) was an Italian sculptor

Verocchio, having made the clay model of the statue, died in 1488, before it had been cast in bronze. He asked in his will that his pupil, Lorenzo di Credi, should be engaged to cast the statue, but after much delay the Venetians selected in 1490 Leopardi for this job. Leopardi, being exiled in 1487 for 5 years on a charge of fraud, was recalled in 1490 by the senate to finish Verrocchio’s impressive statue. Leopardi also made the pedestal on which the statue stands. His name (in Latin) is inscribed on the horse’s girth: “ALEXANDER . LEOPARDUS . V . P . OPUS”, so that early authorities thought that the work was entirely his.

Description:

In his book A new history of Venice, Thomas F. Madden offers a more nuanced view on what happened. He states:

It was nothing of the sort. The placement of Colleoni’s statue was not a requirement of his will, but simply a request. But Venice was a republic, not a dictatorship of the sort that littered Italy. No man, not even the doge, could have a statue of himself in the Piazza of the people. Therefore, placing it outside the Scuola Grande di San Marco not only associated the statue with the saint, but put it also directly adjacent to the church of SS Giovanni e Paolo, the resting place of doges and heroes.

Anyway, the competition was opened and subsequently won by the Florentine Andrea di Michele di Francesco di Cione, known as Verrocchio, the master of the great Leonardo da Vinci. In 1481 Verrocchio reached Venice, bringing with him the larger than life size horse in pieces. He died in 1488 before he could cast his masterpiece. Alessandro Leopardi completed the statue and cast the work in bronze in 1492. ‘I do not believe that there is a more glorious work of sculpture existing in the world’ wrote John Ruskin of this monument.

The statue has more drama and tension than the Gattamelata one. Colleoni controls the horse’s movement forward and rises in his stirrups a little bit, as if he is commanding his men. Hugh Honour:

The portrait is an imaginary one, an evocation of what a 15^th century condottiere should ideally look like. It is a monument less to an individual than a whole class of men, the most mercenary captains of all time – proud, treacherous, money-grubbing, rapacious, chivalrous only to those who could reward chivalry with hard cash or to those of their own kind from whom similar treatment was expected by the code of thieves.

The horse striding purposefully forward is certainly that of Verrocchio, with some retouching by Leopardi. The exceptionally fine pedestal is entirely the work of Leopardi. The inauguration of this magnificent work, resplendent in its gilding (of which today only some traces remain) was in 1496.