Equestrian Statue of Mastino II della Scala

Mastino means mastiff in Italian, and the sculptor took the name at its word. The rider's visor is down, his face hidden, and on top of the helmet sits a dog's head with wings, the family's heraldic dog turned into a crest. He wears armour for the tournament, a horseman a moment before the charge.

Mastino II della Scala had reason to think about how he would be remembered. In the mid-1330s he ruled the widest dominion his family ever held, from Verona across to Padua and Treviso and as far as Lucca in Tuscany. Within a few years a war against Venice and Florence had stripped much of it away. In 1345 he began building his own tomb, in the family enclosure beside the church of Santa Maria Antica, six years before his death in 1351, and this statue crowned it. Centuries in the open air explain why the stone is so worn. Inside the castle the museum has set it in the clock tower, reached along the walkway on top of the walls.