As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughout history in all forms of art to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are figures in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Bible, a piece of apocalypse literature attributed to John of Patmos, and generally regarded as dating to about AD 95. Similar allusions are contained in the Old Testament books of Ezekiel and Zechariah, written about six centuries prior. Though the text only provides a name for the fourth horseman, subsequent commentary often identifies them as personifications of Conquest (Zelos), War (Martius), Famine (Limos), and Death.
A chariot is a type of cart driven by a charioteer, usually using horses to provide rapid motive power. The oldest known chariots have been found in burials of the Sintashta culture in modern-day Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, dated to c. 1950–1880 BCE and are depicted on cylinder seals from Central Anatolia in Kültepe dated to c. 1900 BCE. The critical invention that allowed the construction of light, horse-drawn chariots was the spoked wheel.
In Sabine and ancient Roman religion and myth, Luna is the divine embodiment of the Moon. She is often presented as the female complement of the Sun, Sol, conceived of as a god. Luna is also sometimes represented as an aspect of the Roman triple goddess, along with Diana and either Proserpina or Hecate. Luna is not always a distinct goddess, but sometimes rather an epithet that specializes a goddess, since both Diana and Juno are identified as moon goddesses.
The Brandenburg Gate is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin. One of the best-known landmarks of Germany, it was erected on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to Brandenburg an der Havel, the former capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg. The current structure was built from 1788 to 1791 by orders of King Frederick William II of Prussia, based on designs by the royal architect Carl Gotthard Langhans. The bronze sculpture of the quadriga crowning the gate is a work by the sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow.
A quadriga is a car or chariot drawn by four horses abreast and favoured for chariot racing in classical antiquity and the Roman Empire. The word derives from the Latin quadrigae, a contraction of quadriiugae, from quadri-: four, and iugum: yoke. In Latin the word quadrigae is almost always used in the plural and usually refers to the team of four horses rather than the chariot they pull. In Greek, a four-horse chariot was known as τέθριππον téthrippon.
The quadrigatus was a medium-sized silver coin produced by the Roman Republic during the 3rd century BC. The obverse featured a young janiform bust and the reverse featured Victory driving a quadriga, giving the coin its Roman name, with the inscription "ROMA" below.
Progress of the State is the title of a group of sculptural figures that sits above the south portico, at the main entrance to the Minnesota State Capitol in Saint Paul, the state capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota.
Johann Gottfried Schadow was a German Prussian sculptor.
The Nordic Bronze Age is a period of Scandinavian prehistory from c. 2000/1750–500 BC.
Allegorical interpretation of the Bible is an interpretive method (exegesis) that assumes that the Bible has various levels of meaning and tends to focus on the spiritual sense, which includes the allegorical sense, the moral sense, and the anagogical sense, as opposed to the literal sense. It is sometimes referred to as the quadriga, a reference to the Roman chariot that was drawn by four horses.
The four senses of Scripture is a four-level method of interpreting the Bible. In Christianity, the four senses are literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogical. In Kabbalah the four meanings of the biblical texts are literal, allusive, allegorical, and mystical.
The Horses of Saint Mark, also known as the Triumphal Quadriga or Horses of the Hippodrome of Constantinople, is a set of bronze statues of four horses, originally part of a monument depicting a quadriga. The horses were placed on the facade, on the loggia above the porch, of St Mark's Basilica in Venice, northern Italy, after the sack and looting of Constantinople in 1204. They remained there until looted by Napoleon in 1797 but were returned in 1815. The sculptures have been removed from the facade and placed in the interior of St Mark's for conservation purposes, with replicas in their position on the loggia.
Baron Thomas Jules Vinçotte was a Belgian sculptor and medallist.
The trigarium was an equestrian training ground in the northwest corner of the Campus Martius in ancient Rome. Its name was taken from the triga, a three-horse chariot.
The biga is the two-horse chariot as used in ancient Rome for sport, transportation, and ceremonies. Other animals may replace horses in art and occasionally for actual ceremonies. The term biga is also used by modern scholars for the similar chariots of other Indo-European cultures, particularly the two-horse chariot of the ancient Greeks and Celts. The driver of a biga is a bigarius.
In ancient Roman religion, the October Horse was an animal sacrifice to Mars carried out on October 15, coinciding with the end of the agricultural and military campaigning season. The rite took place during one of three horse-racing festivals held in honor of Mars, the others being the two Equirria on February 27 and March 14.
L'Aurora (Aurora) is a large Baroque ceiling fresco painted in 1614 by Guido Reni for the Casino, or garden house, adjacent to the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, in Rome. The work is considered Reni's fresco masterpiece.
Song of Songs 6 is the sixth chapter of the Song of Songs in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. This book is one of the Five Megillot, a collection of short books, together with Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther, within the Ketuvim, the third and the last part of the Hebrew Bible. Jewish tradition views Solomon as the author of this book, and this attribution influences the acceptance of this book as a canonical text. This chapter contains a dialogue between the daughters of Jerusalem and the woman about the man, followed by the man's descriptive poem of the woman, ending with a collective call to the woman to return.
The Minnesota State Capitol opened in 1905 with roughly 60 artworks that totaled $300,000, or 7% of the $4.5-million project budget. Cass Gilbert, the architect of the Capitol building, had envisioned that the artworks would add "educational value" and provide for the "advancement of civilization and intelligence." Over the years, more artworks would be added to the Capitol, totaling nearly 150 by 2017. Much of the Capitol art is allegorical, as expressed through murals and sculptures, while some feature key moments in Minnesota history. While the allegorical symbolism used in the paintings would have been more widely understood during the time they were painted, over time the meanings have been challenged.
