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| Stefano della Bella Semiramis (Jeu des Reynes Renommées) before 1664 etching Harvard Art Museums |
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| Giovanni Battista Foggini Design for Wall Decoration for Cosimo III de' Medici ca. 1690 drawing, with watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Ignaz Elhafen Herzog Karl V von Lothringen ca. 1687-91 ivory Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Matthias Steinl Emperor Leopold I triumphing over Personification of the Ottomans ca. 1690-93 ivory Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Luca Giordano Mariana, Queen of Spain ca. 1694 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Pierre Lepautre Equestrian Statue of Louis XIV by François Girardon ca. 1700-1710 drawing British Museum |
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| Joachim Kayser and Johan Anton von Klyher Equestrian Portrait of Frederick, Prince of Wales 1727 oil on canvas Royal Collection, Great Britain |
The Childhood of an Equestrian
An equestrian fell from his horse.
A nursemaid moving through the wood espied the equestrian in his corrupted position and cried, what child has fallen from his rockinghorse?
Merely a new technique for dismounting, said the prone equestrian.
The child is wounded more by fear than hurt, said the nursemaid.
The child dismounts and is at rest. But being interfered with grows irritable, cried the equestrian.
The child that falls from his rockinghorse refusing to remount fathers the man with no woman taken in his arms, said the nursemaid, for women are as horses, and it is the rockinghorse that teaches the man the way of love.
I am a man fallen from a horse in the privacy of a wood, save for a strange nursemaid who espied my corruption, taking me for a child, who fallen from a rockinghorse lies down in fear refusing to father the man, who mounts the woman with the rhythm given in the day of his childhood on the imitation horse, when he was in the imitation of the man who incubates in his childhood, said the equestrian.
Let me help you to your manhood, said the nursemaid.
I am already, by the metaphor, the son of the child, if the child father the man, which is involuted nonsense. And take your hands off me, cried the equestrian.
I lift up the child which is wounded more by fear than hurt, said the nursemaid.
You lift up a child which has rotted into its manhood, cried the equestrian.
I lift up as I lift all that fall and are made children by their falling, said the nursemaid.
Go away from me because you are annoying me, screamed the equestrian as he beat the fleeing white shape that seemed like a soft moon entrapped in the branches of the forest.
– Russell Edson (1973)
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| Edmé Bouchardon Study for Equestrian Statue of Louis XV 1750s drawing Musée du Louvre |
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| George Stubbs Joseph Smyth Esq, Lieutenant of Whittlebury Forest, Northamptonshire on a Dapple-Grey Horse ca. 1762-64 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Joshua Reynolds Equestrian Portrait of Sir Jeffrey Amherst ca. 1768 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |
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| Carle Vernet Equestrian Portrait of Napoleon ca. 1805-1810 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Jacques-Laurent Agasse Equestrian Portrait of Francis Augustus Eliott, 2nd Baron Heathfield ca. 1812-14 oil on canvas Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Théodore Géricault The Giaour ca. 1822-23 watercolor Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Edwin Landseer Queen Victoria on Horseback ca. 1837-39 oil on panel Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| George Washington Wilson Portrait of Queen Victoria on Fyvie, with John Brown at Balmoral 1863 carte-de-visite photograph National Galleries of Scotland |