The Flying Gallop
See also:  [Muybridge] (photographed a horse at the gallop)

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The Flying Gallop

Also on this page:  {Motions of the Horse]

All text from:  Pp. 479-503.

which was condensed directly from Reinach's original
articles in Revue Archeologique, 1900-1901.

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The flying gallop is the name given to a way of representing
in art a horse or other quadruped running at full speed. The
front legs are stretched out together forward, the hind legs
similarly extended back almost horizontally, with the soles
of the hoofs veertical, or even up. No horse ever actually
assumes this position, or one like it, in a gallop or in any
other gait; the motion camera has put that beyond dispute.
[Possibly seen as an animal lept across a river, perhaps??]

[Note 3: [P.479] A greyhound and a deer at full speed do 
                 momentarily assume a position something
like that of the flying gallop. But, they are light animals,
and their foot sequence in galloping is "rotary", instead
of "transverse" as is that of horses, cattle, and most other
mammals.]

In fact a horse that somehow got itself into flying-gallop
posture would either fall or have a bad spill when its legs
reached the ground again. The position is therefore a wholly
conventional or symbolic one, used in art because of its 
suggestion of great speed. Its objective falsity was no bar
to its acceptacne by artists, because the human eye and brain
are not quick enough "freeze" most of the shifting positions
of the legs of a running animal.

In fact, nearly all the galloping postures in nearly all arts 
-- until the cinema [see: Muybridge] came to the rescue
-- are visual lies. This makes thier history interesting. 
Being inventions of un-reality, we can trace their genealogies. 
If they corresponded to reality, they might derive anew from 
that, every so often, instead of being, as unrealities, obvious
imitations of other artists' unrealities. The belief that geese
hatch from goose eggs can harldy have its first origin [identified]
because actual observation is constantly repeated. But, the 
medieval belief that geese hatch out of barancles is such a 
fantastic unreality that all versions of the story may safely be
considered as deriving from one original invention.

The most common method of picturing a running animal, the world
over, is with its hind legs on the ground, the frong legs either
pawing the air in a somewhat bent position, or stretched forward.
This is a rearing or prance, like that of a goat when it is rising
to stand up to butt. Something like this prance is momentarily 
assumed when a horse is about to leap over a hurdle; but, it 
wouuld completely interfere with a gallop. 

A running horse [Figure 24a-e] does the very reverse of what the



    Figure 24 a-e, The five basic positions:  
      a) Alighting from leap on hind leg; the only actual 
         position caught by artists' eyes, and used by Fidias
      b) and c) - successive pushing forward
      d) the final spring or push with the front leg
      e) the horizontal leap, all legs off the ground and 
         gathered under..                      

suggests: It gives its final push off the ground for its spring 
through the air with one and then the other of its fore-feet,
and lands first on its hind legs (Fig. 24a).

This landing position is the only one revealed by the camera that
any art has managed to use. Its earliest known [as of 1948] appearance
is in Greek coins from Corinth. Phidias then popularized it
(Fig. 24f), and it had a vogue alongside the prances in the best
Greek period; but then it got rarer, and from about bce 200 ?date? on it
disappeared from Greek, Roman, and Western art. The usual 
representation of this posture by the Greeks was with the
body and neck of the animal rising as if it were loping in
a slow {canter}, or were being pulled
back in its pace; whereas the actual running horse [Fig. 24a] 
has its back level and its neck stretched. It was probably 



     Figure 24-f. An art representation which is true to life. 
                  From the Parthenon frieze, Phidias: 
     Corresponding to Fig. 24a in the leg postions, though the 
     horse is checked back or reared too much.

this effect of checking or slowness that caused later Greeks 
and Romans to abandon again the depiction of this one posture
of the gallop that really occurs.

Following Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and Greeks, the Romans,
Byzantines, peoples of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and 
Modern times (Figures 24 g-l) until the nineteenth century,




  Figure 24-g-l. The Prance: An un-real invention used by artists.
                 This has been favored in most art to represent
  running. It does not actually occur in the gallop, but is the
  take-off for clearing a hurdle.
    g) Ancient Egypt
    h) Assyria
    i) Medieval
    j) Giotto, Italy
    k) Raphael 
    l) Vernet, early 19th century France (1800c)
    
all used only one or the other form of the prance; although
the masters in more recent centuries, such as Raphael, 
Leonardao, Rubens, Velasquez, usually concealed the 
monotony of this stance by favoring fore-shortented
views of their animals; eg, Fig. 24-k.

The flying gallop has an entirely separate history. It appears
full-blown in the Minoan art of Crete and the
derived Mycenaen art of the mainland, of say
1600-1100 bce, and is therefore pre-Greek. See Fig 24 m-n.



   Fig. 24 m-n. The flying gallop -- another invention of 
                an un-reality. It appears first in Minoan-
   Mycenaen art. Though un-natural, it does suggest speed
   of motion.  (m) bull, (n) lions. Vaphio and Mycenae.

This art was interested in vehemence and rapidity; the device
of stretching out the body and limbs is evidently the result
of this inclination: The posture suggests the speed of flight.

The flying gallop did not get adopted into the main current 
of Greek art, which really began pretty much over again, 
centuries later than Minoan-Mycenaen art, with quite crude,
stiff, and static forms.


Next we find this same flying gallop, and other contorted 
animal postures in Scythian
and Siberian art. The Scythians
lived in the steppes of the Ukraine, wher they had trading
contacts with the Greek cities on the north side of the
Black Sea. They were mainly a horse-riding pastoral people,
not skilled in the arts [?out of date interpretation???], 
but often wealthy; and from the sixth century bce (ie, bce500c)
on, they fancied luxury products of foreign manufacture, 
among which occur the flying-gallop examples. 

There is a time gap here, since by the bce500c Minoan-Mycenaen 
art had been extinct in its homeland for half a millennium. But, 
it is probable, or possible, that certain of its traditions 
had been carried to the Black sea and survived thre, and that
the flying gallop, appealing to the horse-loving barbarians,
got preserved in articles made for them, or imitated by them.
The alternative would be to assume that the flying gallop was
independently re-invented by the backward nomadic Scythians [?bias?]
only five hundred years later and five hundred miles away
from the seats of the technologically skilled Mycenaeans.
The lapse and the distance are somewhat short in the vista
of cultural history, and the circumstances unfavorable, to
mae an independent recurrence seem likely, as compared with 
a transmission and carry-over of which the actual records
happens not to have been preserved.  [?more recent (than 1948) discoveries?]

From the Ukraine, this Scythian style with flying gallop 
spread to Hungary; to the Goths who at various times ranged
between the Blatic and the Crimea; to the Caucasus and the 
Caspian Sea; and to southwestern Siberia (Fig. 24-o), where



  Fig. 24. The International Travels of the Flying Gallop.
           (o) Early Siberian art 
           (p) Sassanian Persia
           (q) Han China
           (r) T'ang China. Note the stirrup in r; it is one
               of the earliest pictures of a stirrup, soon after
               ce600.

a related art maintained itself long after the Scythians were 
extinct, in fact until around ce500. From this general region,
our device was communicated to Sassanian Persia
between bce226-641 ?dates??? (Fig. 24-p); all earlier Persian
art lacks the device, as did Assyrian and Greek arts by which
Persian art was influenced. 

A farther spread was to China, where depiction
of the flying gallop had become installed by terminal Han 
times, by ce200c (Fig. 24-q & r). The Han dynasty repeatedly
sought Western connections, especially in order to obtain 
heavy cavalry horses from Feghana in modern Soviet Uzbekistan,
so that an avenue was open for import of the stylistic influence.

The Chinese, and following them the Japanese, adopted the
flying gallop in their art and have kept it to the present
time, though it was not their only method of representing
running animals. Also, in conformity with the bent of their
styles, the Chinese and Japanese gallop is mostly not very
much stretched -- the legs flex more than elsewhere; but, the
hind hoofs leave no doubt as to what it is.

This diffusion to China and Japan was the lst but one of the
travels of the flying gallop. In 1794, it suddenly appeared
in an English engraved print of the flying gallop by Stubbs,
followed 3 year later by a woodcut in the Sporting Magazine.
It was about 25 years more before the the new posture made
its way into British high-art oil painting. This timidity 
of acceptance shows that it probably was popular and aristocratic
predilection for horse-racing in England, and not any aesthetic
originality of its academic paintersw, that led to the 
innovations being made in Great Britain.

In France, where the thoroughbred track racing was first 
introduced from England in 1781, the painters were more
receptive: The first examples of the flying gallop in 
sketches date only from 1817; but within 4 years, Gericault
established it in exhibited art with his "Epsom Derby";
painted in England (Fig. 24-s). The flying gallop soon
over-shadowed or crowded out the older rears and prancers,
except in equestrian statues, where contact with the ground
was necessary for support.

In Germany, the flying gallop seems first to have been 
sketched as late as 1835, and painted in 1840. 

There is some question whether the 19th century (1800c)
European depiction of the flying gallop represnets an 
original invention of this deceptive but appealign falsity,
or an imitation of it. Chinese ceramics and other works
of luxury and art had been reaching the West freely for
250 years before 1794, so that the European eyes, 
especially the eyes of overseas-trading Englishmen, may
have become gradually 



   Fig. 24 (t) Influence of the Camera on Art.
               The painter's eye begins to borrow from the
   photographic film. From Morot's 1886 battle scene. The
   position is that of 24-e -- full gallop. Again, refer
   to [Muybridge].


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Motions of the Horse

cantor
trot   -- must research these.... (soo little time....)
full gallop


Chronology