Regisole

The Regisole ("Sun King") was a bronze classical or Late Antique equestrian monument, highly influential during the Italian Renaissance but destroyed in 1796. It was originally erected at Ravenna, in what is now Italy, but was moved to Pavia in the Middle Ages, where it stood on a column before the cathedral, as an emblem of communal pride and Pavia's deep connection with imperial Rome.

According to different modern scholars the subject was either Theodoric the Great, King of the Ostrogoths (reigned 471–526), "a Roman work of the third century AD", or "possibly Septimius Severus, with several later modifications" (he was emperor 193–211). Ravenna was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until 476. It was later the capital of the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths and the Exarchate of Ravenna, the remaining Byzantine territory in northern Italy. The Colossus of Barletta is a standing Late Antique emperor in bronze that probably was also originally erected in Ravenna.

When, having been removed as a trophy of war to Milan, the Regisole was restored to Pavia in 1335, it was regilded and provided with up-to-date imperial trappings, which may have included anachronistic harness and stirrups. Petrarch, who was aware that it had originally come from Ravenna, praised it in a letter to Boccaccio. An impression of the Regisole, no doubt coloured by Renaissance ideals of decorum, is obtained from a woodcut illustration on the title page of the book of statutes of the city of Pavia, Statuta de Regimine Potestatis, civilia et criminalia Civitatis et Comitatus Papiae (Pavia, 1505).

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