Editing Equestrian statue (section)

{{short description|Statue of a rider mounted on a horse}}
[[File:Museos Capitolinos, Roma, Italia, 2022-09-16, DD 57.jpg|thumb|The 2nd-century Roman [[equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius|bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius]], highly visible in Rome since antiquity, was the main influence on the Renaissance revival of the form]]

An '''equestrian statue''' is a [[statue]] of a rider mounted on a [[horse]], from the [[Latin]] ''eques'', meaning '[[knight]]', deriving from ''equus'', meaning 'horse'.<ref>{{Citation | last = Wheelock | first = Frederic M. | title = The Official Wheelock's Latin Website | url=http://wheelockslatin.com/chapters/twentythree/index.html | access-date = 2009-04-03 }}</ref> A statue of a riderless horse is strictly an '''equine statue'''. A full-sized equestrian statue is a difficult and expensive object for any culture to produce, and figures have typically been portraits of rulers or, in the Renaissance and more recently, military commanders.

Although there are outliers, the form is essentially a tradition in [[Western art]], used for imperial propaganda by the Roman emperors, with a significant revival in [[Italian Renaissance sculpture]], which continued across Europe in the Baroque, as mastering the large-scale casting of bronze became more widespread, and later periods. 

Statues at well under life-size have been popular in various materials, including [[porcelain]], since the Renaissance. The riders in these may not be portraits, but figures from [[classical mythology]] or generic figures such as [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]].