 In the Quattrocento , it was traditional for condottieri like Hawkwood to be buried in major public churches , even when their careers had produced mixed results for the city @-@ state in question . The genre of the equestrian statue was revived during the Quattrocento for the purpose of commemorating condottieri ; Donatello 's Equestrian Statue of Gattamelata ( c . 1447 – 1453 ) in Padua is the first surviving bronze equestrian statue since Ancient Rome . Tibertino Brandolino was interred at San Francesco in Venice ; Jacopo de ' Cavalli at SS . Giovanni e Paolo in Rome ; Paolo Savelli at Basilica dei Frari in Venice , along with a wooden equestrian statue on a marble sarcophagus , which — along with the bronze horses on the façade of St. Mark — may have inspired Uccello 's Hawkwood ; and Konrad Aichelberg at a church in Pisa . When such burials were not possible , frescoes were an acceptable substitute : Guidoriccio da Fogliano was painted on horseback by Simone Martini in Palazzo Pubblico in Siena in 1328 ; Pietro Farnese was depicted in a papier @-@ mâché equestrian monument atop a sarcophagus in the Florence Cathedral in 1363 . 
