_West Front._--On the east side of the atrium court, against the west wall of the exonarthex, rise four great piers from which spring flying arches to the west wall of the church. Salzenberg thought that the upper arches were Turkish, and that the piers were originally intended to support equestrian statues, which he therefore shows in his drawings. Other writers, amongst whom is Fossati, say that the bronze horses now on the gallery outside the west front of S. Mark’s at Venice, taken from Constantinople in 1204, came from this position; but there is not the least authority for this statement, and the horses at Venice are not half the size of those that would be required to justify the suggestion. Bondelmontius in 1422 describing the columns of the city, speaks first of that of Justinian, “secondly of that of the Cross, where are seen four upright porphyry columns; and on them were placed four bronze horses which the Venetians took to S. Mark’s at Venice, but the columns remain.” Brocquière, writing ten years later, says that “westward [in the city] is a very high square column with characters traced on it, and bearing on the summit an equestrian statue of Constantine in bronze. He holds a sceptre in his left hand, with his right extended towards Turkey in Asia and the road to Jerusalem as if to denote that the whole of that country was under his government. Near this column are three [_sic_] others placed in a line, and of single pieces which bore the three gilt horses now in Venice.” Brocquière has here certainly confused the column of Justinian, and that of Constantine, but we may safely accept Bondelmontius. The porphyry column of Constantine, situated in the Forum Constantine, at this time bore a cross with the inscription “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Many modern writers place the four horses in the hippodrome, as Nicetas speaks of “the arched starting-places for the racers, above which are fixed powerful horses of gilt bronze, curving their necks and facing one another as if eager for the course” (Ed. Bonn, p. 150).