Parthenon frieze
The Greeks, although much less interested in animals than the Egyptians, had one
superb vehicle for their sense of beauty, the horse. In Greece beauty became the artist's
main objective, and was applied to the human face and body with such a mania for
perfection, that for centuries the words 'beauty' and 'Greek' were practically
interchangeable.
Archaic Greek art produced small bronzes of horses, stylized to the point of abstraction.
Charming as they are, they do not show any feeling for beauty in the naturalistic sense.
This first appears on the frieze of the Siphnian Treasury in Delphi of about 525 bc. They
display all the elements which, a century later, were to be developed and given livelier
movement in what are arguably the most beautiful horses in art, those which cavort
round the frieze of the Parthenon. Although they tug at their vanished reins, and long to
break into a gallop, they seem conscious of the fact that they are taking part in some
great ceremonial; they are proudly vigorous, and beauty still predominates. The splendid
curves of energy — the neck and the rump, united by the passive curve of the belly, and
capable of infinite variation, from calm to furious strength — are without question the
most satisfying piece of formal relationship in nature: so much so that good photographs
of horses have the same effect on some people as works of art. In this respect a well-
bred horse is to some extent the result of the art of selective breeding.
How much the Greeks valued the beauty of horses is shown by their coinage: a chariot
drawn by four horses of unequalled elegance is the reverse of the most beautiful coin in
the world, the dechadrem of Syracuse commemorates the prowess of the Macedonian
cavalry on the reverse of a coin of Philip II; and the horse's head, that was to influence
Leonardo da Vinci, is the reverse of a dechadrem of Alexander the Great.
There is on the Acropolis the fragment of a marble horse of the fifth century, which must
originally have been one of the most beautiful pieces of animal sculpture in the world,
and was probably the inspiration of a small bronze horse in the Metropolitan Museum of
questionable date, but unquestionable charm. The most famous life-size horses of
Antiquity still exist undamaged, thanks to the predatory instincts of the Venetians, who
were prepared to commit any crime to decorate their Basilica. The horses of St Mark's
are so familiar, and so much a part of the marvellous show-case of the facade, that we
forget what extraordinary survivals of antique sculpture they are. Whether or not they are
copies made to fob off the Emperor Nero, they certainly go back, to fifth-century
originals, and have never been surpassed.
