hello everyone in this video we are going to look at the equestrian portrait of charlemagne or maybe charles the bald this is a small bronze statuette it's just um nine and a half inches in height it's from the carolingian period and it was made during the 9th century now um it's either charlemagne or his grandson charles the bald uh but that doesn't change our interpretation of it because it fits with the characteristics of carolingian art what we have going on here is that interest in roman tradition so remember that charlemagne is interested in connecting the carolingian empire to the roman empire and being the spiritual inheritor of that and that is what we see going on in this statuette so that's why you know if it's charlemagne great if it's charles the bald great but the intentions here and its representation of carolingian art fitting those characteristics remains the same so right remember with the romans they are interested with depicting emperors on horseback we have our equestrian statue of marcus aurelius here on the screen and so these have similarities but importantly this is not to scale right that marcus aurelius statue is huge charlemagne tiny um now uh both of these show emperors on horseback they both do not use accurate scale the human figures here okay the figure of marcus aurelius the figure of possibly charlemagne we'll go with charlemagne for this video to be consistent um those are too big in terms of their scale to horses if this was accurate to life the human figures would be much smaller but that scale is used here to show the importance of the emperor of marcus aurelius of charlemagne right it shows their power their control through the art so that's why they're showing so big scale is used to show their importance but now again right scale is important here um are charlemagne on horseback less than a foot in height right this comparison to like a hand here just to give you a sense of scale our marcus really is 11 feet 6 inches 11 and a half feet huge in comparison what does this tell us about the artistic abilities at the time we know the roman empire had highly skilled artisans and was working with traditions that they had done for centuries right building upon greek and etruscan knowledge of art but charlemagne you know we by the time the carolingian empire comes into being the roman empire in the west has collapsed um there's decentralized governments for a long time uh we get we go into what used to be called the dark ages which we no longer use that term anymore because it's not actual it's not correct dark implied a loss of knowledge it's not that there was a loss of knowledge but there was a loss of centralized knowledge there was a loss of a centralized government and an order in that context so we see the rise of charlemagne but knowledge shifts as we saw um or as one can see with like early medieval art you have art that becomes smaller but still incredibly detailed and still requiring highly skilled artisans it's just the the resources and the setup is not there to necessarily do large-scale pieces like what we saw during the roman empire now to break down charlemagne and how we know what's going on here this is likely a depiction of um charlemagne on parade and why we think this uh he's wearing a crown he's wearing imperial robes and he's holding the orb which symbolizes world domination right he's in control over his land and territory uh now all these things these are decorative things he's not on horseback going into battle right he's not wearing any armor that's why we would assume suspect interpret this as him being on parade in this being a more ceremonial portrait of charlemagne okay so that is our equestrian portrait of charlemagne or possibly charles the ball um bronze here it is on display in a museum and so right it's it's really meant to further connect the carolingian empire to the roman empire right they're in creating this they're inspired by roman art they are trying to copy roman art right using bronze again trying to make those um connections to create a carolingian visual culture that relates back to roman visual culture