“Alexander & Bucephalus” by John Steell, located in front of Edinburgh's City Chambers. Modelled 1832, cast in bronze 1883, presented to the city by the subscribers 1884.

With the appearance of American Pharoah in Vogue, the magazine considers the relationship of “Horse and Rider” in the inaugural exhibit of the online Vogue’s Gallery, a subject that dates from ancient times and that may see a resurgence with the Pharoah’s success.

Jacques-Louis David’s “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” (1801), oil on canvas. Musée National du Château de Malmaison.

Among my favorite horse-and-rider works are those involving Alexander the Great and his faithful steed Bucephalus – or “Ox-head,” for the white, ox-shaped marking on his forehead -- whom he tamed when he was just a boy. (Alexander noticed that the big, black stallion was afraid of his shadow and so turned his head toward the sun so he couldn’t see it. The story sounds like a legend, but many historians agree that it’s probably true. Bucephalus and Alexander were a team for many years until the horse died at age 26 in modern-day Pakistan, where he is said to be buried in a town named for him.)

James Earle Fraser’s “End of the Trail” in Shaler Park, Waupun, Wis.

Alexander astride a rearing Bucephalus was the model for Jacques-Louis David’s turn-of-the-19th-century “Napoleon Crossing the Alps.” Just as Napoleon fancied himself a latter-day Alexander, David was his Apelles, Alexander’s court painter.

These are images in which horse and rider curve upward in triumph and power. Far more poignant are the downward curves of James Earle Fraser’s sculpture “End of the Trail,” an elegy for an exhausted American Indian and an exhausted way of life.