Spanish, or maybe South Italian, Naples, late 17th century

Manolo March Collection, Son Galceran, Majorca;

Christie’s Paris, 16 June 2015, lot 65;

Sylvie Lhermite-King, À la Façon de Venise, Paris;

Exhibited at TEFAF, Maastricht, March 2016;

Where acquired.

The majestic animal, with its carefully braided mane adorned with satin ribbons, performs a levade, a show-ring movement that was considered the pinnacle of dressage in equestrian arts. This horse, with slender limbs, powerful hindquarters and neck, slightly convex muzzle and long flowing mane, is typical of Iberian horses, such as the Portuguese Lusitanos and Spanish Andalusians, which were the favourite horses of European monarchs from the Renaissance to the 18th century.

The equestrian portraits of Diego Velázquez, of course, but also Anton Van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens have left some of the most beautiful painted representations of this ideal of the ‘horse of kings’. Among the sculpted representations of a horse performing a levade, whose representation in the round is a real feat, we can mention the bronze equestrian monument of Philip IV, created in Florence by Pietro Tacca from 1634 (Plaza de Oriente, Madrid), and the contemporary series of equestrian portraits of the Habsburgs by Caspar Gras (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

Although this horse can be compared to the most refined Neapolitan presepi, particularly in its use of wood, clay, fabric and glass, its subject, the quality of its execution and its large size are unusual for this type of production. It is more likely to be an individualised portrait of an exceptional horse, the pride of its owner, who wished to immortalise it in this extremely technical mouvment, as in the equestrian portraits of the Spanish Golden Age.