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above: Leonardo's Study for the Sforza monument
1488-89, executed as metalpoint on bluish prepared paper, located in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, Windsor, England
Janeway refers to "the great bronze horse in Milan" in the opening scene of [
79 Concerning Flight] when she admonishes Holo-Leonardo for not finishing things (she has the benefit of historical hindsight, of course).
Janeway: "Your beautiful painting of the Adoration, the great bronze horse in Milan, the Battle of Anghiari - unfinished, all of them. You were going to publish your notebooks. You never did. You have given up, abandoned your most important works."
Janeway as Catarina, Holo-Leonardo's apprentice, castigates the Maestro who hangs his head, [79 Concernng Flight]
During Leonardo's second period in Milan, in about 1510, he produced designs for a second equestrian monument which was also not constructed. It was to be the funeral monument for Marshal Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, who was in the service of the French. A group of horse drawings dated to the last three years of Leonardo's life suggest that the French King, Francis I, also asked Leonardo to design an equestrian monument, though no trace of such a commission has remained in other documents.
| In probably 1485, Leonardo was commissioned by his patron Ludovico Sforza (1452-1508), known as "Il Moro", to celebrate his father Francesco Sforza by creating an equestrian statue depicting the subject triumphantly on horseback. His patron was a patron of the arts who had, after the murder of his elder brother Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1444-1476), the rightful heir of Francesco Sforza the founder of the ruling dynasty, become the guardian of the latter's son and in that way seized power over Milan in 1480. Like his brother before him, Ludovico wanted to justify his rulership by donating an equestrian monument in honour of his father Francesco Sforza. |  Ludovica Sforza |
Leonardo worked on the project until 1499, when the French invasion of Milan spelled the permanent end of the project. His first design for the monument dating from the mid-1480s shows a rearing horse with a dynamic rider, under whose front hooves a conquered soldier lies. This motif was not merely a reference to the taking over of power in Milan, but was principally an envisualisation of the name of Sforza, which roughly translates as "force". At first Leonardo was commissioned to make only a life-sized statue, already a difficult task, but his patron then decided that the monument should be four times larger. For years Leonardo studied the movement of horses, making countless sketches, and he devised new casting techniques.
 Francesco Sforza, intended commemorative subject of Leonardo's "great bronze horse" monument in Milan |
Personally I think Janeway was being tactless, because the equestrian monument did not get made due to no fault of Leonardo's. Enormous technical problems delayed the monument's construction, and at 23 feet high and weighing nearly 80 tons the prospect of a giant bronze sculpture was to prove too challenging even for Leonardo. However, Leonardo did not give up until forced to, and the full-scale model of the horse in clay was unveiled in November 1493 in the courtyard of the Milan fortress. But in 1499 the metals set aside to make the monument were instead turned into cannons for a battle against the French commanded by King Louis XII. When the French captured Milan, without a fight, and toppled Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo stayed until one morning when he discovered French crossbowmen using his clay model of the monument's horse for target practice. |
Thereupon, no doubt hugely disappointed, Leonardo left Milan with Salai (his apprentice and intimate and ultimately a beneficiary in his will), along with his friend Luca Pacioli, going to Mantua for two months then to Venice where Leonardo was hired as a military engineer, then returning to Florence at the end of April 1500. He did not return to Milan until 1516, and later served the French there after King Francis I, successor of Louis XII, re-took the city.
above: In the centre, Leonardo's sheet from Codex Madrid I, folio 149r shows, from above, the hollow for casting the Sforza monument with the horse head down. There can also be seen the outer negative mould and channels to the furnaces through which the bronze is to be poured in. Two rectangular and two round furnaces surround the smelting hollow. The sketch of the horse seen from the side shows that it was to be cast head down. The sketch dates from c.1493, and was executed as pen and ink on paper measuring 21 x 15 cm, and is located in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid in Spain.
| More preparatory drawings by Leonardo for the Sforza monument: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
above: Leonardo's double manuscript page on the Sforza monument. It dates from c.1493, and was executed as red chalk on paper, measures 21 x 30 cm, and is located in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid.
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