Bartolomeo Colleoni Bartolomeo Colleoni ( 1400 – 2 November 1475 ) was an Italian condottiero , who became Captain - General of the republic of Venice , where there is a famous statue showing him on horseback . He is also credited with having refurbished the Roman baths at Trescore Balneario . Biography . Colleoni was born at Solza , in the countryside of Bergamo ( then part of the Duchy of Milan ) , where he prepared his magnificent mortuary chapel , the " Cappella Colleoni " , in a shrine that he seized when it was refused him by the local confraternity , the Consiglio della Misericordia . His family was a noble one , exiled with the rest of the Guelphs by the Visconti . Bartolomeo ' s father Paolo seized the castle of Trezzo by wile and held it by force , until he was assassinated by his cousins , probably acting on order of Filippo Maria Visconti , duke of Milan . The young Colleoni trained at first in the retinue of Filippo d ' Arcello , the new master of Piacenza . Then he entered the service of various condottieri , beginning with Braccio da Montone , who was skirmishing in Apulia , profiting from the struggles between Alfonso of Aragon and Louis of Anjou during the weak sovereignty of Queen Joan II by taking Alfonso ' s cause , and then of Carmagnola . After the latter was put to death at Venice ( 1432 ) , Colleoni passed to direct service of the Venetian republic , entering on the major phase of his career . Although Gianfrancesco Gonzaga was nominally commander - in - chief , Colleoni was in fact the true leader of the army . He recaptured many towns and districts for Venice from the Milanese , and when Gonzaga went over to the enemy , Colleoni continued to serve the Venetians under Erasmo da Narni ( known as Gattamelata ) and Francesco Sforza , winning battles at Brescia , Verona , and on the Lake of Garda . When peace was made between Milan and Venice in 1441 , Colleoni went over to the Milanese , together with Sforza in 1443 . Although well treated at first , Colleoni soon fell under the suspicion of the treacherous Visconti and was imprisoned at Monza , where he remained until the duke ' s death in 1447 . Milan then fell under the lordship of Sforza , whom Colleoni served for a time , but in 1448 he took leave of Sforza and returned to the Venetians . Disgusted at not having been elected captain - general , he went over to Sforza once more , but Venice could not do without him ; by offering him increased emolument s , Venice induced him to return , and in 1455 he was appointed captain - general of the republic for life . Although he occasionally fought on his own account , when Venice was at peace , he remained at the disposal of the republic in time of war until his death . He set his residence in the castle of Malpaga , which he had bought in 1465 and restored in the following years . Although he often changed sides , no act of treachery is imputed to him , nor did he subject the territories he passed through to the rapine and exactions practiced by other soldiers of fortune . When not fighting , he devoted his time to introducing agricultural improvements on the vast estates with which the Venetians had endowed him , and to charitable works . At his death in 1475 at Malpaga , he left a large sum to the republic for the Turkish war , with a request that an equestrian statue of himself should be erected in the Piazza San Marco . The statue was modelled by Andrea del Verrocchio and cast in bronze after his death by Alessandro Leopardi , but , as no monument was permitted in the Piazza , it was placed near the Scuola Grande of St Mark outside the church of SS Giovanni e Paolo . Italian cruiser " Bartolomeo Colleoni " . In 1930 the Italian Regia Marina launched a cruiser of the " Condottieri " class named after Bartolomeo Colleoni .