48 



The Book of the Horse. 



the French camp, just before the battle of Pavia, says that the kuig, Francis I., the most 

 accomplished horseman of the day, was much deligiited with the Mantuan horse which had 

 been sent him as a present from the Marquis of Mantua, and that it was much admired by 

 everybody." Charles V. also used in war a Mantuan charger. The poet Torquato Tasso, in 

 his " Forna della Nobilla," observes that, " A horse-dealer seeing any stallion of the Mantuan 

 breed, branded ivitli the sign of the sun' is ready to pay a good sum for him, for rarely do we 

 see bad horses produced from a good breed. A purchaser would not do the same if he had 

 to buy a slave, and found that he was an African or a Turk." 



Some idea may be gathered of the shape of Mantuan horses from such equestrian statues 



MiJl'MEO IIAI.IAN WAKRIOR (FIFTKENTII CENTURY), FROi; A STATUE AT PADUA. 



as that of Gallamelata by Donatello, the designs of Leonardo da Vinci, and the drawings 

 of Giulio Romano. 



It is more than probable that the latter artist, wlicn adorning the palaces of the Duke 

 of Mantua, would introduce portraits of the horses of which the Duke was so proud. Supposing 

 that they were portraits, and not, like most of the horses of the most celebrated painters and 

 sculptors, conventional animals, the Mantuan horses (circa 152;) were not handsome, or even 

 shaped for carrying weight and galloping according to our modern luiglish ideas. 



Under sixteen hands, with slight limbs in proportion to their bodies, the neck short, the 

 head long with small ears, rather like the modern Norman horse, the back unusually short, 

 the hind-quarter round, the tail set singularly low, and so thin of hair as to be almost what we 

 call rat ; this last peculiarity alone strengthening the idea that the fine original was a portrait 

 of a favourite parade horse of the Duke of Mantua. 



