Leonardo's
Horse: One of the casualties when the French invaded
Italy in 1499 was Leonardo da Vinci's great clay model for "il Cavallo".
Leonardo never replicated the maquet, and the bronze that the Duke of Milan
had set aside for the horse was made into cannons to fight the French.
So no horse. But in 1982, Charles Dent, an American da Vinci enthusiast
founded the non-profit Leonardo da Vinci's Horse, Inc., to finally realize
Leonardo's dream. A new model, based on da Vinci's specifications and drawings,
was made by American artists led by sculptress Nina Akamu. Two castings
were made, one for Milan and the second for the Frederick Meijer sculpture
park in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (Meijer paid for both castings). The Milan horse
was unveiled on September 10, 1999, exactly five hundred years after the
destruction of Leonardo's clay model. The Cedar Rapids horse will be unveiled
on October 10. Read about the project at: http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues98/sep98/leonardo.html
or at: http://www.meijergardens.org/horse_story.htm
or at: http://www.leonardoshorse.org/site.html
Or you can order your
own horse, direct from the foundry, in various sizes, from small (5 inches)
for $750 to really, realy large (12 feet) for $1,000,000: http://www.tallix.com/ilcav_orderform.html