Pet Portraits

Horse portraits have appeared in art for a very long time and flourished in the Renaissance particularly in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries all throughout Western Europe.

Sometime between the end of the 12th and 13th century an Italian horse portraits artist named Paolo Uccello created a number of horse portraits on of Sir John Hawkwood riding his horse. Paolo's style started off a trend of painting large, powerful and majestic horse portraits mainly of kings or noblemen reflecting their power over their land and people.
The two main for-fathers of horse portraits and general horse paintings were Uccello and Psanello in the Renaissance. Uccello has various pieces of equine art scattered around the world in different museums for example the battle of San Romano he painted for the Medici Palace. Ucello had a new and different style of painting horse portraits as freedom of expression through art had not long been established so as you can imagine he was quite successful and was mainly famous for his little drawings on the enamel of medieval manuscripts.
Horse art did not just stop in horse portraits there were equestrian artists that liked to do horse sculptures namely in Venice, Italy an artist named Donatello sculpted a depiction of the Capitian General of Venice which still resides in the Piazza del Santo in Padua today.
Another famous household name who did many horse paintings was Leonardo da Vinci many of his horse portraits were done for the Duke of Milan, he would capture everyday riding scenes and create huge pieces of art that would line the walls of the palaces. Studies of da Vinci's notebooks show that he researched and studies the horses a lot before painting them, he even used to measure them to make sure his horse art was technically perfect.
This kind of horse art in the Renaissance was furthered by a strong sway towards creating bronze sculptures and horse statues and such like. This is obviously something we have seen through the ages from ancient Greece even with horse art being depicted in stone. One particular Flemish sculptor called Anrea Ricco who was based in Italy made many small horse monuments for example.
Horse art, especially horse portrait artists all stem from the past history of the tournament, horse paintings and horse portraits usually depicted rules and the famous mounted on horses rearing to spring forward. One example would be Titian (1490-1576) who painted Charles V on horseback or Raphael's St George and the Dragon was also similar.
Horse art particularly horse paintings, horse portraits and horse sculptures really kicked off the horse portrait artist movement in the Renaissance period and this kind of art evolved very quickly over the 200 year period where as things like clothing and such like did not. It shows us the ability of the renaissance horse portrait artists to be able to develop their work when they had freedom of creation. A lot was suppressed and now they were free do draw and paint as they please.

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