Guardhouse by the Horse

Equipment and materials for flood protection were stored here.

The flat clay relief shows a naked youth standing frontally to the viewer in slight contrapposto. His head is turned to the left and is only visible in strict profile. The young man is dressed only in a coat that is swung around his shoulders and falls down to his sides in serpentine folds. With his left elbow he is leaning on the back of a horse that is standing calmly behind him. His right hand is holding a laurel wreath in a slightly lowered position. The horse, which is about the same size, is shown in a strict side view, its head is turned slightly into the picture. It is only slightly prominent in the sculpture. Its left forefoot is raised to walk, its tail tucked between its hind legs. Although the horse is clearly wearing a bridle, the youth is not holding it. The image is based on the depiction on plate 55 in d'Hancarville's "Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities from the Cabinet of the Hon. W. Hamilton, Naples, Paris 1766/67, Tom 1. On this plate, the left half shows the tomb of a warrior with sacrificial figures. This warrior tomb consists of a flat base with a meander ornament above which, framed by Ionic columns, is a pictorial representation of the warrior with his horse. The whole is crowned by a triangular pediment with acrotera. Cavaceppi's relief then served the Dessau sculptor Johann Christian Erhrlich, a student of Cavaceppi, as a model for the execution of a sandstone relief on the "Wachhaus zum Pferde".
Source: st.museum-digital.de/index.php?t=objekt&oges=51080

"The useful with the beautiful" was the motto of Prince Franz of Anhalt-Dessau.
The landscape design created under his reign together with his friend Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff included not only palaces, parks and gardens, but also flood protection on the Elbe and Mulde.
The wall watch houses built between 1770 and 1800 were also included in the landscape design.
Today they are the gems on the cycle and hiking trails of the Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz, which is a World Heritage Site. (Source: Wikipedia)