A man on a horse on the Riva degli Schiavoni . . .

Who's that man on the horse, dad? - somtimes we happen to hear this question, while on the Riva degli Schiavoni, uttered by a young visitor of Venice. Nine out of ten, parents are unable to answer such a question. And it's not exactly their fault. Most of Venetians, actually, would be unable to tell who the man on the horse is...
This simply because Venice is terribly in love with the glory of its old Repubblica Serenissima so whatever came later on, Venetians tend to label it as 'dopo la caduta della Repubblica' (after the fall of the Republic).

Victor Emmanuel II

The man on the horse, in fact, is a King. King Victor Emmanuel II, The Gentleman King (Re Galantuomo), so they used to call him in the old days, possibly because he had no great impressive qualities and we had to find at least an epiteth for him (so it would eventually be for his son, Humbert I, who was the Re Buono, the Good King).

Nonetheless, one should recall that he was the first King of (unified) Italy, although his number is 'II' since he kept  the old Piedmontese system of king-numbering (logic, apparently, is not our strong quality).
He fought three Wars of Independence against Austria - no wonder, then, if in Austria history books tend to call them The Italian Wars of Rebellion.
The day after his accession to the throne - his father Charles Albert having abdicated and left for Oporto in Portugal after losing the war against Austria - he firmly confronted Fieldmarshal Radetzky stating that Piedmont would have never given up the Statuto Albertino, the recently approved Cosntitution of the country (one of the first examples in Europe) and the old Austrian general had to accept it.

The grave of Victor Emmanuel at the Pantheon
in Rome

He was sexually  extremely active, one would say in our days. He had loads of children out of his marriage and when his wife died he ennobled his lifelong lover, la bella Rosina, creating her Countess of Mirafiori (an estate that her descendents would eventually sell to Giovanni Agnelli Senior, the founder of FIAT).
Rumours had it that he was not a 'real' Savoy (and his lookings, so different from those of his father, seemed to be an evidence of that) but simply the son of a butcher who, while still a baby, had been secretely taken as a substitute for the real son of Charles Albert who allegedly would have died burnt alive during a fire...

Queen Victoria, in her own diary, recalls dancing with him at Buckingham Palace - he was rude, smelt very badly, and had no awareness of anything similar to good manners. And still, the English sovereign attributed to him a certain strange sense of distinguishedness - you could not stumble on him (if one can stumble on kings, of course) without noticing him!

Next time you look at that statue, remember there is a very good book by English historian Denis Mac Smith on the subject: Italy and its Monarchy !