Equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni

A topographical cabinet card showing the equestrian statue of the condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni, a former Captain General of the Republic of Venice.

When Colleoni died in 1475, he left a substantial part of his estate to the Republic on condition that his statue be commissioned and set up in the Piazza San Marco. The legacy was accepted but, since statues were not permitted in the Piazza, the monument was erected instead in the Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Executed by Andrea del Verrocchio in 1480-1488, it is the second major equestrian monument of Italian Renaissance, after Donatello's equestrian statue of Gattamelata (1453).

Photographed by Carlo Ponti of Venice.

Ponti studied photography in Paris in the 1840s. In 1852, he obtained a license to produce and sell photographs in Venice. He ran the first of the big photographic businesses in the city, producing albums with architectural views of great artistic sensitivity. He was also the inventor of camera lenses suitable for panoramic photography.