Venice is full of statues. But none quite as terrifying as that of a military chap on a horse outside the imposing basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Castello. His story is quite something, a tale of conquest, treachery, a distinctly sneaky sleight of hand on the part of the Venetian Republic… oh, and possibly murder too.

Meet the very distinctive Renaissance warlord Bartolomeo Colleoni.

Colleoni was born around 1400 near Bergamo, into minor nobility with more pride than money. His father was murdered when Colleoni was two — killed by vengeful relatives while playing draughts. None of this was particularly out of the norm. Back then Lombardy was a patchwork of warring city-states, and for a young man with a title and no fortune, the obvious career was to pick up the sword and do something with it.

You pays your money, you gets your condottiere

Colleoni was a condottiere, a fancy title for a mercenary. Armour for hire, men who fought for the highest bidder and would switch sides at the drop of a big enough purse. He fought first for various other condottieri in the south, then entered Venetian service in 1431. When peace with Milan in 1441 made Venice less useful to him, he left to serve the Duke of Milan instead — who promptly imprisoned him, suspicious of a mercenary who changed allegiance so easily.

Released after the duke’s death in 1447, Colleoni returned to Venice, was passed over for the top command in 1451, and left for Milan again, this time to serve his old comrade Francesco Sforza. Venice, missing him more than it cared to admit, lured him back with money and titles… what else? In 1455 he was finally named Captain-General for life — a position he held until his death, fighting for Venice, growing rich from the Republic’s treasury, and never quite winning everyone’s trust.

His home in his later years, the castle of Malpaga outside Bergamo, became a lavish court of its own — painters, writers, and old comrades-in-arms gathered there, a smaller and rougher version of the cultural courts more usually associated with Renaissance princes than mercenary captains.

The trick with the statue

Colleoni died in 1475, leaving Venice a fortune — some 100,000 ducats, by most accounts, earmarked for war against the Turks. But this largesse came with a condition: the Republic had to erect an equestrian statue of him in Piazza San Marco.

It was never going to happen. Venetian law forbade monuments to individuals in the city’s main square — not even a doge, in life or death, was granted that honour, and Venice was not about to make an exception for a foreign-born mercenary, however useful. But the money was too good to refuse. The Senate found the loophole: a statue would go up, just not there — instead in the square facing the Scuola Grande di San Marco, a charitable confraternity named for the Republic’s patron saint. Technically, a statue “of San Marco.” Just not the one he’d asked for.

Andrea del Verrocchio won the commission and died before finishing it; his assistant Alessandro Leopardi completed the casting. The result — unveiled in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, not Piazza San Marco — is now considered one of the finest equestrian statues of the Italian Renaissance, horse balanced on three legs, rider fixed in an expression of total, unmovable authority. Which is, depending on how you read it, either exactly the tribute he wanted or a very Venetian way of giving him almost everything except what he actually asked for.

Neither the statue nor the engraving above should be trusted as a true likeness of the man. Verrocchio wasn’t awarded the commission until 1483 — eight years after Colleoni’s death — and didn’t even arrive in Venice to work on it until 1486, dying there in 1488 with the casting still unfinished. He never had the chance to see the man he was sculpting. The engraved portrait above, made in the 1560s, is later still. What we’re left with, then, are two invented faces rather than one real one — and they don’t agree with each other. The statue gives Colleoni a look of total, glaring ferocity, jaw set and eyes fixed on some enemy in the distance; the engraved portrait is a far milder, more thoughtful-looking man altogether. Both are guesses; one just happens to be aimed at the fierce condottiere the legend demanded.

But was he poisoned?

There’s a persistent rumour that Venice didn’t just shortchange Colleoni on his statue’s address — it may have had a hand in his death too. He died at Malpaga in November 1475, ostensibly of natural causes, at about 75. A decent innings for the day and his background. But Colleoni had spent decades playing off Venice and Milan against each other, taking riches from the Doge’s Palace but never quite forgetting he could walk away if a better offer came along. That kind of leverage tends to generate enemies, and the Republic had form. Its Council of Ten was no stranger to assassinating inconvenient rivals abroad, and poison rarely left a trace, or scandal, and no obvious hand to blame.

The rumour has a curious pedigree. Giacomo Casanova — writing in his memoirs about standing watch near the Colleoni statue on a rendezvous — refers in passing to “the hero Colleoni” as having been poisoned, adding the caveat “if the secret history does not lie.”

It’s not proof of anything, and no serious historian treats it as established fact, especially from the dubious pen of Casanova. But if you’re headed for Venice Noir next month, try to take the time to look old Bartolomeo in the face, even if it’s not his at all. He certainly still scares the wits out of me, and you know you’re standing on the cobbles where Giacomo Casanova surely had the same thoughts.