Drawn to comparison

Across civilizations, few animals have carried as much symbolic weight as the horse. In both Western and Chinese history, horses shaped warfare, enabled empires, and stirred the imagination of artists.

Yet, the meanings attached to them — and the ways they were depicted — reveal profound differences in how power, heroism and the individual were understood on either side of Eurasia.

In the Western tradition, the horse is most often inseparable from the individual hero or ruler. From antiquity onward, equestrian imagery served as a visual shorthand for sovereignty.

The bronze equestrian statue of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180) in Rome, one of the few ancient monuments to survive the Middle Ages, established a durable model: the calm ruler elevated above the masses, mastery of the horse equated with mastery of the world.

This tradition resurfaced forcefully in early modern Europe. In equestrian portraits by Rubens, Van Dyck, and Velazquez — all masters of the Baroque period between the late 16th and the mid-18th centuries — kings and princes appear astride powerful steeds, their authority dramatized through controlled movement and disciplined force.

This logic reaches its theatrical height in Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), who in reality crossed the Alps on a mule, is transformed into a heroic conqueror on a rearing horse, reins clenched, his name inscribed alongside conquerors like Hannibal and Charlemagne.

In Western art, the horse amplifies the will of the individual, projecting ambition, destiny and personal glory. The animal becomes an extension of human command.

Chinese horse imagery follows a markedly different path. While horses were no less essential to warfare and the state — particularly from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) onward — their representation rarely centers on the self-aggrandizement of a single ruler.