Art
One-horse show
John McEwen
In his letter of last week Sir Hugh Casson indignantly suggested that if his latest exhibition 'The Horses of San Marco' (Royal Academy till 28 October) was a 'stop-gap', then it was some stop. He is dead right. It is a well presented exhibition, with many notable things in it quite apart from the presence, as its mystical centrepiece, of Horse B of the legendary quadriga. But the sponsorship is commercial and, if not by association, this is always rather off-putting. For instance, the British athletics team in the recent match with Russia had to run around with 'British Meat' written all over them — a stroke of promotional genius as good as Henry Cooper advertising The Great Smell of Brut'.
A Horse of San Marco on the other hand seems worthy of a higher fate than selling Olivetti, but no doubt Doge Dandolo, who stole the quadriga from the Turks, would have seen the financial sense of it. Anyway, do not let it dissuade you from going as soon as you can. Here, for your delectation, is one of the wonders of Western art and hardly a cat and, more disturbingly, apparently not even a guard to be seen. There has been none of the ballyhoo that surrounded the display of the 'Flying Horse' at the Chinese Exhibition of 1973, so there are no queues.
The obvious problem confronting the organisers of such a one-horse show is how to orchestrate a climax. Promotional exhibitions, inevitably out for popularity, incline to padding and gimmicks. There is a whiff or two of this in the present case, but overall it delays the viewer by the sounder principle of throwing some choice works of art in his path — a few of the basilica; all to do with horses. Foremost is a Greek room dominated by a life-size steed, specially cleaned for the exhibition, from the Museum of the Conservatori in Rome. Greek bronzes are notoriously rare and this is one of the finest, first attributed to Lysippus, now, more conservatorially, to his circle. Whoever made it — and the meagre results of the exhaustive scientific and scholastic analyses of the San Marco horses make a nonsense of such attributions — it is lively in a more delicate way than the Roman examples next door, which are spread across a room that culminates with the uplifted Horse B itself. While beyond, the fall-out of the quadriga's influence is traced most celebratedly in works by Pisanel lo, Durer, Leonardo (five drawings), and the baroque bronzes of Giam bologna.
None of this detracts from the impact of Horse B, resplendent from its recent cleaning and positioned so that it can be viewed from above and below as well as on a level. Hippologically it may not make exact scientific sense — apparently the eyes are human, the legs too long artistically the loins may lack for modelling, but its aura is undeni able. And, better still, enhanced by the tests it has been subjected to over the past two years.
It remains an idol, a total mystery. No one is any clearer than they were before as to where it originally came from or even at what date it was made. The Venetians brought it from Constantinople in 1204, where it is legendarily supposed to have surmounted the hippodrome. Apart from that, the experts are left with nothing but a painful awareness of our own ignorance of all aspects of the ancient world. Metallurgical analysis shows that the cast is 98 per cent copper, micrographic that the cuts in its surface are a technique to increase dazzle (not the damage of thieves scraping off the gilding), but the date is indeterminable. The extensive scientific report in the catalogue makes it clear that Horse B has not even suffered as much as was thought from our own dreaded industrial pollution. It seems likely that it will return to its appointed place above the piazza and See civilization out.
'Venetian 17th-Century Painting' (National Gallery till 30 November) continues the National's reappraisals of overlooked schools and reputations — 'Late Gothic Art from Cologne', 'Moroni' — with an unprecedented exhibition of pictures of this neglected period, borrowed exclusively from collections in Ireland anclaritain. The catalogue is wonderfully cheap at £1.50, the scholarship impeccable, the art irredeemable. Bernardo Strozzi, though not quite a master, is easily the best painter on view, with Niccolo Rineiri lending technical virtuosity in support. This has long been the accepted art historical line and Potterton upholds it. Still, the exhibition was probablY worth doing just because it had never been done.
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