The Bronze Horses Taken from Constantinople in 1204, Now Inside San Marco
The gilded bronze quadriga looted from the hippodrome of Constantinople during the sack of 1204 and set above the doors of San Marco in Venice. The originals now stand inside the basilica; copies occupy the loggia. No object states the outcome of the Fourth Crusade more plainly.
A crusade preached for Egypt ended by storming the largest Christian city in the world. The Venetians who had provided the fleet took payment in kind, and the horses went home with them — along with relics, marbles and the four bronze columns of the treasury. Byzantium recovered Constantinople in 1261 but never recovered the wealth, the manuscripts or the standing; the empire that fell to the Ottomans in 1453 had been broken two and a half centuries earlier by fellow Christians. The horses are among the very few large bronzes to survive from antiquity. See why the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople.
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