History Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for historians and history buffs. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I have heard that the number of legs a horse has in the air in a statue indicates how the rider died. According to what I have understood:
Is there any truth in this, or was it a tradition at any point or place?
TL;DR: No such code, but most equestrian statues at Gettysburg happen to match it by chance.
From http://www.snopes.com/military/statue.asp:
The hoof code mostly holds true in terms of Gettysburg equestrian statues, but there is at least one exception. James Longstreet wasn't wounded in this battle yet his horse has one foot raised.
(illustration from Longstreet page)
The article has a pretty good list of statues that do and don't match the "tradition".
Short version of the article -
Plenty of statues do follow this rule, but plenty of statues don't, even in Washington which has plenty (only 10 out of 30 are "correct").
No sculptor seems to be aware of this rule.
The odds of "correct" horse posture is 1 in 3 (remember Washington DC count above?), so all the "confirmations" of the rule are just statistical flukes that our brain are trying to make a pattern out of.
A separate investigation also reveals a negative: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1093/in-statues-does-the-number-of-feet-the-horse-has-off-the-ground-indicate-the-fate-of-the-rider
No sources confirming the rule in sculpting related textbooks
A historian for the U.S. Army Center of Military History also dismissed the story as a myth.
Of 18 surveyed statues of famous people: 8 are "correct", 8 are "wrong", 2 are "not enough info about the person's death".
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, one of the most famous sculptors of his day, had 1 equestrian statue match the "code" and another one that did not.
As far as Gettysburg - which seems to be the origin of the myth:
"Gettysburg: The Complete Pictorial of Battlefield Monuments by D. Scott Hartwig and Ann Marie Hartwig (1988)" has 478 monuments and memorials, of them only 6 freestanding horse riders. They all match deaths/survival at Gettysburg.
However, General John Sedgwick's horse has all four feet on the ground, despite the fact that he was later killed in battle!
(source: Civil War Wiki.net)
Peter the Great died due to disease.
[humour] tag or smilies. ^_~
Oct 5, 2012 at 12:24
Is there any truth in this, or was it a tradition at any point or place?
It is an urban myth. Although I would have liked it to be true. It was discussed on the quiz show QI and on snopes.
I believe it to be fact, rather than fiction/myth. In the cases where the legs raised or not, does not correlate with the subject depicted, I believe it to be the artist's portrayal being devoid of said guidelines. There are many equestrian statues worldwide, and some countries are stricter and abide by this more so than others. I hate to break the news to you all, but Gettysburg is not the center of the universe! We cannot come to a conclusion on such broad a spectrum when we don't have all the facts. Also, no matter how much research you do on the internet, there are so many countries out there that censor most, if not all the information that is shared about them on the internet, that it is impossible to come up with a solid answer on many things. I was born in one of these non-democratic countries, and as a child, was taught about the meaning of the equestrian statue meaning, and every statue I saw, was true to its meaning. I moved to another country in my younger years, and again, was shown other examples of this, again, true to its meaning, and finally, moved to the states, where everyone colors outside the lines, and then criticize and discredit everything for being different than what it should be. Don't get me wrong, I love living in the US of A! I love being able to be free, and am grateful to have gotten the opportunity to be part of this beautiful country. I also know that because I have lived in other countries were freedom is not an option, I can appreciate this freedom more so than a person who was born here and takes it for granted. The point I am trying to make is.... Don't discredit this as a myth if you don't have all the facts, and don't think you have all the facts just because you found a website that supports your misguided belief.
