Verrocchio, COLLEONE, 1488, Venezia

Speranza




To immortalise the condottieri in the classical manner, Renaissance Italy once more gave an honoured place to bronze equestrian statues.

To Verrocchio we owe one of the most magnificent ever made.

The model for it was the Roman statue of Marco Aurelio.

But Verrocchio's genius led him to produce not a mere imitation, but a major original creation.

Verrocchio follows the Greek tradition in which the horse, nobles of all animals, deserved almost as much as man to be used as a subject for art.

Verrocchio thus devotes as much care to perfecting the mount as the rider.

Standing in his stirrups, Colleone seems at one with the caracolling steed he is riding.

Colleone's intelligent and brutal face is not that of one condottiere rather than another.

The state was begun several years AFTER the death of Colleone, whom Verrocchio had probably never seen.

It is the embodiment of all the conottieri, who thrived on the unceasing conflicts that set the Italian states against one another.