Theresa Thompson on art’s relationship with the horse

Horses no longer pull ploughs or chariots and coaches or carry riders into battle but the relationship between horses and humans remains. The most commonly depicted animal in art across the centuries from Stone Age art onwards, the horse has been admired for its beauty, grace and power. Now a new drawings exhibition at Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford, celebrates these qualities. Beauty, Grace and Power: The Horse in drawings of the Renaissance and Baroque presents a selection of nine Old Master drawings to show how artists in the 16th and 17th centuries regarded the horse.

At that time the horse was nearly always depicted accompanying human action, said David Wilson, the curator. It was not until George Stubbs (1724-1806) that people began to draw animals for themselves. Many drawings were studies for battle scenes.

Take the largest work in the show, The Battle of the Amazons, magnificently drawn by Sir Anthony van Dyck and others after a painting by Peter Paul Rubens. The drawing was made for an engraving. Awash with action, every inch deserves inspection: the Greeks pulling the Amazons off their horses, the animals tumbling from a gracefully arched bridge into the river.

For Wilson, Abraham Bloemaert’s (1566-1651) drawing of St Martin dividing his cloak with the beggar sums up the exhibition’s title. All the emphasis in this unfinished drawing (thus far) has been put on the saint’s lively mount. Wilson points out that where the horse takes up a prominent position it acts as a device to draw you into the picture. Also that the work was almost certainly made for an engraving as the rider has his sword in his left hand (which would have been uncommon).

Though Bloemaert’s prints were very popular, none survives of this. And don’t miss Giovanni Ambrogio Figino’s charming little sketches that reveal the artist studying the animals moving, rearing, pulling chariots, and charging about the place...

A second exhibition, The Florentine Innocenti: Vincenzo Borghini and the artists of the Foundling Hospital in Florence, is on until February 24.

Beauty, Grace and Power: The Horse in drawings of the Renaissance and Baroque n Christ Church Picture Gallery n Until December 23