A new look at a very famous scene. The horses seem to come alive here, and they nicely frame the religious figure below the arc that sweeps through the image. The thrust of the arc and the attitudes of the horse's heads give the image its energy. Another contrast here is the juxtaposition of secular horses and the religious context. Historical note: These are replicas of two of the four 4th Century Greek copper horses that once stood high over the chariot race starting gate in Constantinople's great Hippodrome. (The originals are now preserved inside St. Marks. They were looted by Venetian forces as part of the sack of the capital of the Byzantine Empire in the Fourth Crusade and placed on the face of St. Mark's in 1254. Napoleon had them shipped to Paris in 1797, where they were placed on the Arc de Triomphe. When Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in 1815, they were returned to Venice.)
