During the Renaissance the bronze horseman acquired new meaning as an object of revered antiquity. It spoke to Renaissance antiquarians who dedicated themselves to empiricism, scholarly inquiry, and a quest to recover the ancient past. When an influential early Italian humanist ascended scaffolding to inspect and draw the famous monument in Constantinople, he announced a major discovery that would initiate a new stage in the monument’s biography. Cyriac of Ancona exposed Justinian’s centuries-old "secret": the bronze horseman was originally created for a Theodosian emperor. His discovery was a triumph of antiquarian empiricism, demonstrating that inscriptions could uncover lost truths and correct the errors of the past. This was a paradigm shift in the study of the past. A drawing from Cyriac's circle became the main visual source for reconstructing the horseman’s appearance. It has continued to shape the monument in scholarly imagination to the present day. This chapter also examines representations of Justinian's bronze horseman in Notitia Dignitatum and views of Constantinople by Cristoforo Buondelmonti.

In the decades between 1204 and 1261 the bronze horseman would be little more than a distant memory. After the conquest of Constantinople in 1261 by Michael VIII of Nicaea, the horseman was rediscovered. It became an intensely treasured relic of a bygone imperial era. In devastated, post-Crusader Constantinople two monuments continued to serve as grand symbols of a once proud empire: Hagia Sophia and Justinian’s column. Michael VIII made the column of Justinian part of the land holdings of the Great Church. Though the horseman triumphed over Latin adversity, the column did not emerge unscathed. The shaft of the column was stripped of its Justinianic bronze panels, which had originally made the column glow like gold. Palaiologan rulers had neither the funds nor the craftsmen to restore the metallic splendor of the column’s original appearance. Until the fall of Constantinople, they continuously invested their ever-diminishing resources into maintaining these two monuments, even as others (including the Holy Apostles) gradually crumbled. The soaring horseman became central to the elevation ritual in imperial coronations. Michael VIII payed homage to and competed with the bronze horseman by erecting a new column. Even though Michael VIII attempted to rival the column of Justinian and to cement his own legacy, he failed.

The bronze horseman issued an ominous warning in 1317. The fall of the horseman’s orb caused grave concerns for the emperor Andronikos II (r. 1282–1328). Andronikos II had this renowned imperial monument restored in 1317. He ensured that the bronze horseman would remain standing as an embodiment of Palaiologan imperial renewal. Yet Byzantine sources are silent about this important event. A range of evidence suggests that the Byzantine historian Nikephoros Gregoras intentionally underplayed the incident. By protectively demurring about the actual object that had fallen – the symbol of sovereignty and dominion – he concealed contemporary anxieties behind a rhetorical façade of successful restoration. The horseman’s insecure grasp of the orb and the orb’s inexplicable mobility became a flash point for international concerns about the future of Byzantium. Audiences as far away from Constantinople as London, Cordoba, and Moscow became preoccupied with the orb. This chapter reveals that the presence or absence of the orb became a key element in the reception of the monument and the evaluation of Constantinople’s future. Palaiologan rulers repeatedly spent enormous sums of money to ensure that the orb remained in the bronze horseman's hand.