The principal subject of Marino Marini’s sculpture, beginning in the 1930s and continuing throughout his long career, was the heroic theme of horse and rider. His equestrian statues evolved over the years from formal versions in the classical style, inspired by Roman and Etruscan art, to fiercely personal visions in which the rider, increasingly unable to control his mount, came to represent the human condition itself. As Marini put it: “My equestrian statues express the torment caused by the events of this century… . My wish is to reveal the final moment of the dissolution of a myth, the myth of the heroic individual, the humanists' ‘man of virtue.’”