Galloping horses painted by Xu Beihong during the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) stand for resilience and moral resolve.

A rider and a horse by Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) master Zhao Mengfu, a representative figure of China's literati painting tradition.

Napoleon Crossing the Alps by French painter Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825).

Grazing horses depicted by Zhao Yong, the son of Zhao Mengfu.

The horses of French painter Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) are shaped by an obsessive study of equine anatomy.

In The Battle of San Romano by Florentine painter Paolo Uccello (1397-1475), horses are locked in violent combat.

Across civilizations, few animals have carried as much symbolic weight as the horse. In both Western and Chinese history, horses shaped warfare, enabled empires, and stirred the imagination of artists.

Yet, the meanings attached to them — and the ways they were depicted — reveal profound differences in how power, heroism and the individual were understood on either side of Eurasia.

In the Western tradition, the horse is most often inseparable from the individual hero or ruler. From antiquity onward, equestrian imagery served as a visual shorthand for sovereignty.

The bronze equestrian statue of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180) in Rome, one of the few ancient monuments to survive the Middle Ages, established a durable model: the calm ruler elevated above the masses, mastery of the horse equated with mastery of the world.

This tradition resurfaced forcefully in early modern Europe. In equestrian portraits by Rubens, Van Dyck, and Velazquez — all masters of the Baroque period between the late 16th and the mid-18th centuries — kings and princes appear astride powerful steeds, their authority dramatized through controlled movement and disciplined force.

This logic reaches its theatrical height in Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), who in reality crossed the Alps on a mule, is transformed into a heroic conqueror on a rearing horse, reins clenched, his name inscribed alongside conquerors like Hannibal and Charlemagne.

In Western art, the horse amplifies the will of the individual, projecting ambition, destiny and personal glory. The animal becomes an extension of human command.

Chinese horse imagery follows a markedly different path. While horses were no less essential to warfare and the state — particularly from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) onward — their representation rarely centers on the self-aggrandizement of a single ruler.

Instead, Chinese art tends to emphasize the moral quality, vitality and spirit of the horse itself. From Han tomb reliefs to Tang (618-907) sculptures and Song (960-1279) paintings, horses appear not as props of power, but as living beings endowed with character.

This distinction is especially evident in the Tang Dynasty, often regarded as the golden age of Chinese horse imagery. The Tang court prized horses from Central Asia, emblems of the dynasty's openness and cosmopolitan reach. Yet works, such as the celebrated Stone Reliefs of the Six Steeds, installed at the mausoleum of the second Tang emperor Li Shimin, commemorate not imperial vanity, but shared hardship.

The horses are shown without the emperor astride them; instead, they stand alone, or, in one striking scene, accompanied by a man — one of the emperor's generals — pulling an arrow from a wounded steed. The gesture is met not with resistance, but with trust, underscoring a bond forged in battle, rather than a display of sovereign power.

So where, then, were the emperors and generals, if not depicted on horseback? "In the gardens," replies Maxwell Hearn, a leading curator of Chinese painting in the United States and head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Department of Asian Art.

"You don't see paintings from that period of a conquering general planting a flag on a beach. Instead, the Chinese elite preferred to be shown in their own gardens," he says.

"Above all, they wished to be remembered not as bureaucrats or rulers of the state, but as gentlemen versed in the refined arts of painting, calligraphy, music and chess."

This preference helps explain the near absence of mounted rulers in Chinese art, as well as the quieter treatment of horses themselves. Chinese painters from the Song Dynasty onward — the likes of Li Gonglin, Zhao Mengfu, Ren Renfa — often portrayed horses in moments of stillness: grazing, bathing or resting.

"They are what we call literati painters — artists of classical cultivation who dominated much of Chinese art history and often held official posts," says Ma Shunping from the Palace Museum in Beijing, curator of an upcoming exhibition on ancient China's equine art and culture, drawn in part from the museum's own collection.

"Their images invite contemplation, serving as vehicles for reflection on unrecognized talent, constrained strength, or virtue awaiting its moment."

Standing in sharp contrast are the Western battle scenes, such as the Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii or The Battle of San Romano by Florentine painter Paolo Uccello (1397-1475) where horses are locked in violent motion, carrying history forward through conquest.

Even when horses are used as mirrors of thoughts and emotions, Western art diverges sharply from the Chinese tradition.

The work of Theodore Gericault (1791-1824), a pioneer of Romanticism in French painting and arguably the most influential artist in redefining the horse in modern art, offers a telling example.

Far removed from the composed steeds of Baroque equestrian portraiture, his horses emerge as forces of nature, expressive and unstable, their unsettled bodies echoing the psychological and political upheavals of post-Revolutionary Europe.

Rooted in early Romanticism, Gericault's approach was informed by an obsessive study of equine anatomy — a pursuit that had largely eluded his Chinese counterparts, who placed greater emphasis on conveying spirit than on physical likeness.

Chinese art underwent its own transformation, particularly after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. Yet, the horse endured as a charged cultural image, nowhere more powerfully than in the works of Xu Beihong (1895-1953), the most renowned painter of horses in modern China.

Swept forward in broad ink lines and taut compositions, his horses are rarely still: they surge, rear and strain ahead, their energy barely contained. Trained in Western anatomical study, yet grounded in Chinese brush tradition, Xu gave his subjects both physical weight and expressive force.

During the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45), Xu's horses came to stand for resilience, moral resolve and the aspiration of a society struggling toward renewal.

Yet, this symbolic power did not emerge in isolation. Across history, in both Chinese and Western societies, horses were far more than instruments of transport or war. They facilitated movement itself — of people, goods, ideas, technology and beliefs.

In China, the opening of the Silk Road during the Han Dynasty relied not only on camel caravans, but also on horses capable of guarding routes, carrying officials and sustaining control over vast frontiers.

Demand for strong warhorses from Central Asia fostered sustained contact between China and the nomadic societies of the Eurasian steppe, creating a horse-powered network of diplomacy and trade through which silk, jade, metalwork and ideas traveled east and west.

In later periods, especially during the Song Dynasty between the 10th and 13th centuries, China institutionalized horse acquisition through systems such as the Tea-Horse Trade, exchanging tea for warhorses from frontier regions in the west and southwest.

These routes declined under the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), as the Mongol rulers' direct control of the Eurasian steppe reduced the need for such exchanges.

During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the question of horse supply resurfaced. Warhorses were obtained through several parallel channels: Joseon Korea (1392-1897), particularly Jeju Island, provided horses through tribute and limited trade, though these remained supplementary, while frontier horse markets along the northern border enabled regulated exchanges with Mongol groups for steppe-bred mounts.

The Tea-Horse Trade was also revived, reflecting the Ming state's persistent effort to secure reliable cavalry resources, as well as the animal's crucial role in facilitating exchanges.

In the Western world, horses also played a connective role. From the Persian Empire to Rome, mounted couriers, cavalry and traders depended on them to bind together territories spanning thousands of kilometers.

During the medieval period, between the 8th and 13th centuries, equestrian cultures in West and Central Asia further refined breeding, veterinary knowledge and riding techniques, which later spread to Europe through trade and contact.

Technology associated with horses traveled in both directions as well.

According to Li Yongping, a researcher from the Gansu Provincial Museum in Lanzhou city, Northwest China's Gansu province, archaeological and historical evidence suggests that chariot technology reached China from the Western Eurasian steppe and was adopted during the Shang Dynasty (c. 16th century-11th century BC).

Many centuries later, the innovation of the single-metal stirrup — widely believed to have originated in East Asia around the third or fourth century — spread westward through the steppe, eventually transforming warfare and mobility in Byzantine and medieval Europe.

"Across these networks of exchange, the horse consistently occupied the boundary between cultures — a living agent that crossed borders and rendered them permeable. Even today, it recalls a world in which distance was measured in days of riding rather than hours of flight, and in which movement depended on endurance, trust and mutual reliance," says Li.

From this shared history of movement and encounter emerged a deeper, more enduring role. Across both worlds, the horse came to serve as a mirror of human aspiration.

Whether rearing beneath an emperor or standing quietly in a scholar's painting, it carries the same lingering question: how should strength be borne, and to what end?

Contact the writer at zhaoxu@chinadaily.com.cn