Leonardo's Horse (also known as the Sforza Horse or the Gran Cavallo ("Great Horse") ) is a project for a bronze sculpture that was commissioned from Leonardo da Vinci in 1482 by the Duke of Milan Ludovico il Moro, but never completed. It was intended to be the largest equestrian statue in the world, a monument to the duke's father Francesco Sforza. Leonardo did extensive preparatory work for it but produced only a large clay model, which was later destroyed.
About five centuries later, Leonardo's surviving designs were used as the basis for sculptures intended to bring the project to fruition.
An equestrian monument was commissioned of Leonardo da Vinci in 1482 by Duke of Milan Ludovico il Moro. It was intended to be the largest equestrian statue in the world, a monument to the duke's father Francesco Sforza. Seventy tons of bronze were collected by Ludovico for casting the statue, which approached 8 metres (26 ft) in height, [3] dwarfing earlier horse monuments by Donatello and by Leonardo's former master, Verrocchio. [4] [lower-alpha 1] Leonardo initially planned a more dynamic design than those of his predecessors, initially including a fallen soldier to support the rearing horse, but at some point acquiesced to a more traditional walking horse. [6]
In preparation for the work, Leonardo studied horses, and wrote a treatise on horse anatomy. Another treatise, titled Of Weight, included detailed plans for casting the statue, [7] which would have been done in separate hollow pieces and featured iron braces for internal support. [8] [lower-alpha 2] By November 1493, a full-size clay model of the horse (without its rider) was exhibited at one of the Sforzas' weddings, gaining Leonardo significant fame. [3] In a 20 December 1493 note by Leonardo, he stated his readiness to begin the casting process, but in November 1494, Ludovico gave the bronze to his father-in-law Ercole d'Este to be used to forge cannons to defend the city from the invasion of Charles VIII. [7] [3] [10] Leonardo's rival Michelangelo encountered him at some point in Florence, and insulted him by implying that he was unable to perform the casting. [11] [lower-alpha 3]
The clay model was used as an archery target by French soldiers when they invaded Milan in 1499 at the beginning of the Second Italian War; it was afterward destroyed by cycles of rains and subsequent freezes. [3] In 1511, Leonardo undertook an equestrian monument as a tomb for Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, for which he again designed a rearing pose and supporting victim—but this was never modelled due to a confederation of Swiss, Spanish, and Venetian forces driving the French from Milan. [12]
In 1640, Pietro Tacca built the first equestrian monument featuring a (freestanding) rearing horse and King Philip IV of Spain, for which Galileo Galilei helped compute gravitational solutions—similar to Leonardo's—to deal with its offset weight. Étienne Maurice Falconet's Bronze Horseman accomplishes a similar feat, although neither reach the physical scale of Leonardo's design. [8]
About five centuries after the original project failed, Leonardo's surviving design materials were used as the basis for sculptures intended to bring the project to fruition.
Charles C. Dent, an amateur artist and flying enthusiast since his youth, strove to become a pioneering United Airlines pilot by profession as well as a dedicated art collector. In 1977, he read in the September issue of National Geographic its feature article on the history of Leonardo's horse and statue. [13] Dent then began a project to re-create the unfinished sculpture in his home town, Allentown, Pennsylvania, [14] and founded the nonprofit organization Leonardo da Vinci's Horse, Inc. (LDVHI) to support the project. [15] His efforts to grow the organization to finance the project proved a difficult task that required more than 15 years.
Dent's projected cost for the horse came to nearly US$2.5 million. He had a domed studio/workshop constructed in Allentown within which he personally began to conceptualize the re-creation and initial modelling of the sculpture. In 1988, he enlisted sculptor/painter Garth Herrick to begin part-time work on the horse. When Charles Dent died of Lou Gehrig's disease on December 25, 1994 he left his private art collection to LDVHI, the sale of which brought more than $1 million to the fund. The LDVHI Board acted on its promise to Dent to complete Dent’s vision.
By 1997, Tallix Art Foundry, in Beacon, New York, the company contracted by LDVHI to cast the horse, had suggested bringing Nina Akamu, an experienced animal sculptor, on board to improve upon the Dent-Herrick horse. After several months. Nina Akamu determined that the original model could not be salvaged and concluded that a completely new sculpture needed to be executed.
Leonardo had made numerous small sketches of horses to help illustrate his notes about the complex procedures for molding and casting the sculpture. But his notes were far from systematic, and none of the sketches points to the final position of the horse, with no single definitive drawing of the statue. Akamu researched multiple information sources to gain insight into the original sculptor's intentions. She studied both Leonardo's notes and drawings of the horse and those of other projects he was working on. She reviewed his thoughts on anatomy, painting, sculpture, and natural phenomena. Her research expanded to include the teachers who had influenced Leonardo. Akamu also studied Iberian horse breeds, such as the Andulasian, which were favored by the Sforza stables in the late 15th century. [16]
Two full-size casts were made of Akamu's 24-foot (7.3 m) design. The primary cast – The Horse – was placed at the Hippodrome of San Siro in Milan, and unveiled on September 10, 1999. [17]
The Da Vinci Science Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania, holds the rights to Leonardo da Vinci's Horse [18] as a result of its 2003 merger with LDVHI.
Additional renderings of The Horse of different sizes are displayed in the United States and Italy. [19]
The second full-size cast of Nina Akamu's design became known as The American Horse, which was commissioned by philanthropist Frederik Meijer and was placed at the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, a botanical garden and sculpture park in Grand Rapids, Michigan on October 7, 1999. [20]
A 2.5-metre (8 ft) bronze version of the sculpture stands in Leonardo's birthplace, Vinci, Tuscany, Italy, where it was dedicated on November 17, 2001. [21] Made possible with gifts from several benefactors, including Peter F. Secchia, the former United States Ambassador to Italy, and his wife, Joan, The Vinci horse inspired a sister city relationship between Vinci, Italy, and Allentown, Pennsylvania. A plaza in Vinci also was named in the memory of Charles C. Dent.
A 12-foot (3.6 m) replica was placed in Charles C. Dent's hometown of Allentown, Pa. in the Charles C. Dent Memorial Garden at The Baum School of Art, where it was dedicated on October 4, 2002. [22]
The Da Vinci Science Center – the organization that is shaped by the merger of LDVHI and what was then known as the Discovery Center of Science and Technology – displays a three-foot (1 m) replica of The Horse in its main lobby, which was dedicated when the science center opened its current location on October 30, 2005. [23] The Da Vinci Science Center's sculpture also has appeared on loan at Discovery Times Square in New York City, New York, and at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
An eight-foot-tall (2.5 m) replica of The Horse was placed in Sheridan, Wyoming, where it was dedicated on August 20, 2014. [24] The Wyoming Horse was commissioned by the Wyoming Community Foundation on behalf of the Sheridan Public Arts Committee. [25]
Another 24-foot-high recreation (7.3 m) of the Sforza horse, based on different design interpretation, was manufactured by the Opera Laboratori Fiorentini S.p.A., in collaboration with Polo Museale Fiorentino and the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, Italy. It is made of steel frame with special resin coated fibreglass, to make it look like bronze. It is made of six pieces and can be transported and re-assembled. It has been on display at various locations during exhibitions on Leonardo. Some of the venues have been; [26]
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and palaeontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo.
Andrea del Verrocchio was an Italian sculptor, painter and goldsmith who was a master of an important workshop in Florence.
An equestrian statue is a statue of a rider mounted on a horse, from the Latin eques, meaning 'knight', deriving from equus, meaning 'horse'. A statue of a riderless horse is strictly an equine statue. A full-sized equestrian statue is a difficult and expensive object for any culture to produce, and figures have typically been portraits of rulers or, in the Renaissance and more recently, military commanders.
Cecilia Gallerani was the favourite and most celebrated of the many mistresses of Ludovico Sforza, known as Lodovico il Moro, Duke of Milan. She is best known as the subject of Leonardo da Vinci's painting The Lady with an Ermine. While posing for the painting, she invited Leonardo, who at the time was working as court artist for Sforza, to meetings at which Milanese intellectuals discussed philosophy and other subjects. Cecilia herself presided over these discussions.
Lorenzo di Credi was an Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor best known for his paintings of religious subjects, and portraits. With some excursions to nearby cities, his whole life was spent in Florence. He is most famous for having worked in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio at the same time as the young Leonardo da Vinci, who seems to have influenced his style considerably.
Giovanni Antonio Amadeo was an Italian Renaissance sculptor of the Early Renaissance, architect, and engineer. He dominated late fifteenth-century Lombard architecture and sculpture.
The Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) left thousands of pages of writings and drawings, but rarely made any references to his personal life. The resulting uncertainty, combined with mythologized anecdotes from his lifetime, has resulted in much speculation and interest in Leonardo's personal life. Particularly,personal relationships, philosophy, religion, vegetarianism, left-handedness and appearance.
La Vita di Leonardo Da Vinci — in English, The Life of Leonardo da Vinci — is a 1971 Italian television miniseries dramatizing the life of the Italian Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519).
The Breeders’ Cup Trophy is an authentic and totally faithful bronze reproduction of the Torrie horse. The original was created in Florence, Italy by Giovanni da Bologna, around the late 1580s. Each year the Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships award to the winner of each of 14 races a garland of flowers draped over the withers of the winning horse and four Breeders' Cup Trophy presented to the connections of the winners.
A Treatise on Painting is a collection of Leonardo da Vinci's writings entered in his notebooks under the general heading "On Painting". The manuscripts were begun in Milan while Leonardo was under the service of Ludovico Sforza and gathered together by his heir Francesco Melzi. An abridged version of the treatise was first published in France in 1651. After Melzi's manuscript was rediscovered in the Vatican Library, the treatise was published in its modern form in 1817.
The Equestrian Statue of Gattamelata is an Italian Renaissance sculpture by Donatello, dating from 1453, today in the Piazza del Santo in Padua, Italy. It portrays the condottiere Erasmo da Narni, known as "Gattamelata", who served mostly under the Republic of Venice, which ruled Padua at the time. It is the first full-size equestrian statue of the Italian Renaissance.
The Equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni is a Renaissance sculpture in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, Italy, created by Andrea del Verrocchio in 1480–1488. Portraying the condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni, it has a height of 395 cm excluding the pedestal. It is the second major equestrian statue of the Italian Renaissance, after Donatello's equestrian statue of Gattamelata (1453).
The Leonardeschi were the large group of artists who worked in the studio of, or under the influence of, Leonardo da Vinci. They were artists of Italian Renaissance painting, although his influence extended to many countries within Europe.
Horse and Rider is a beeswax sculpture depicting a rider on a horse. The history of the sculpture is unknown before the 20th century. The work has been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci by the Italian art historian Carlo Pedretti, though most historians have ignored or denied the attribution. A number of casts have been made, using a mold taken from the wax original.
Nina Akamu is a Japanese-American artist known for her sculpting. She is presently living in Rhinebeck, New York.
The Rearing Horse and Mounted Warrior or Budapest horse is a bronze sculpture attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Depicting Francis I of France on a destrier horse, it is estimated to have been cast from a clay or wax model in the first half of the 16th century. The sculpture is in the permanent exhibit of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts.
Leonardo is a historical drama television series created by Frank Spotnitz and Steve Thompson. The series was produced by Italian Lux Vide in collaboration with Rai Fiction, Sony Pictures Entertainment, with Frank Spotnitz's Big Light Productions and Freddie Highmore's Alfresco Pictures in association with France Télévisions and RTVE.
Italian Renaissance sculpture was an important part of the art of the Italian Renaissance, in the early stages arguably representing the leading edge. The example of Ancient Roman sculpture hung very heavily over it, both in terms of style and the uses to which sculpture was put. In complete contrast to painting, there were many surviving Roman sculptures around Italy, above all in Rome, and new ones were being excavated all the time, and keenly collected. Apart from a handful of major figures, especially Michelangelo and Donatello, it is today less well-known than Italian Renaissance painting, but this was not the case at the time.