Renaissance Rider Identity

Into the Renaissance
At its core, the Renaissance was a time of changing purpose for the horse. The advancements in lighter weaponry reimagined the warhorse and the demands of it. Compared to an explosive firearm, cavalry no longer impressed on the battlefield. Thus, the demand of the warhorse changed to a demand for a strategist. The horse had to move fast enough and intelligently enough to protect its rider from a bullet. This demand shift occurred over a matter of centuries. Compared to all the development of human identity up to the Renaissance, this shift was an extremely rapid transformation in identity. Due to the speed of the change, the horse’s identity transformation exemplifies David Harvey’s priority of process over product in
Of course, the rider simply could have been depicted without the animal astride, but the horse brought significant support to its rider. The horse was practical, expensive, and essential in Renaissance society. In addition, Renaissance thinkers exulted the horse as intelligent and divinely suited for human use. With the horse’s high prestige in society, the projected identity of horse and rider was purposely one unit. The layer of the horse and the layer of the rider “superimposed upon each other” in the process of depicted motion in the portrait or monument. The unification of horse and rider in art was a horse/rider palimpsest of Renaissance culture; the horse was so commonly alongside a rider and so essential to human identity that the layers of horse and rider
In the everyday actions of modern humans, a noticeable distinction between natural and manufactured is easily perceived. However, preserving a human identity outside of the horse/rider palimpsest was extremely difficult, and the horse/rider palimpsest was truly a threat to human sense of self during the Renaissance. The popularity and utility of the horse/rider palimpsest brought the discussion of human and animal identities to the forefront of society’s