Are you interested in a 500 year old story that involves a horse, a master and a guy named Ludovico Sforza? I thought so. Do read on...
Leonardo Da Vinci was, as you are probably aware, a true master artist. In fact, many folks refer to him as the greatest artist ever produced by the Renaissance. The man who grew to a ripe old age of 67, is probably best known for his mysterious painting, "Mona Lisa" or "La Gioconda", a portrait of the wife of a Florentine official which was painted in Da Vinci's later years. However, there is much, much more to this artist than meets the eye.
Da Vinci was what many refer to as a genius, well before his time. A man who had such incredible intellectual powers and abilities, that he had a difficult time taking any project to its full completion. Consider it, here's a fellow who one minute is inventing the world's first armored fight vehicle and the next, imagining flying machines not unlike today's helicopters. He illustrated the ideas he had about underwater machines, images of what would later echo submarines. With so many ideas floating through his brain, its understandable that many of Da Vinci's drawings and notes were left unfinished as he moved from one revelation to the next.
As a painter, Da Vinci was astounding, having trained under the watchful eye of Verrocchio, a Florentine painter, goldsmith and sculptor, who in addition to creating fabulously elegant works of art, also shared my first name. Da Vinci learned his craft and went on to use it not only for pleasure, but for payment. His reputation as a master earned him many commissions, some of which he completed and was even paid for. He was the original creative thinker, a philosopher as much as an artist who after contemplating a move in his work, would stop, look and contemplate some more.
In an interesting turn of events, during the year of 1482, Da Vinci offered his services to Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, not as an artist, but rather a skilled military engineer who could, as an added bonus, paint and create sculpture in marble, bronze and clay. Specifically, Da Vinci was intent on letting the Duke know that he would undertake the commission of a bronze horse, to be designed and executed in the memory of the Duke's father, Francesco. The Duke thought this was marvelous and Da Vinci had a job. Which brings us to our story ...
The horse, or rather, the equestrian monument, that Da Vinci so wanted to create for the Duke, never made it further than a large clay maquette, or model of a horse, minus his rider. Da Vinci was said to have felt at the time, "...of the horse, I shall say nothing, because I know the times ...." The sculpture was never cast in bronze as intended and eventually died a slow death as a result of war in the late 1400's. There were however countless drawings connected with this monument which was to be the largest equine statue ever built, weighing 80 tons and standing 24 feet high.
In yet another interesting turn of events, some 500 years later, an American art patron, airline pilot and amateur sculptor named Charles Dent decided to undertake a project to try to make Leonardo's horse a reality...
The final statue was crafted by the Tallix foundry in Beacon, NY (the same foundry who did the FDR and Korean War Memorials in Washington DC). The giant horse was unveiled in its new and permanent home in Milan.
Leonardo Da Vinci would be proud.
