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Originally Posted by Michele Rushworth
Gorgeous! Why is it called Leonardo's Horse?
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Oh Michele,
Thanks for your interest!
I guess I should back up and explain this from the start. The late Charles C. Dent was an airline pilot, self taught artist, lifelong collector of Italian renaissance and antique bronzes, French impressionist paintings, and visionary for a better world. Upon forced retirement from flying at age 60, he needed something really big to do for the remainder of his life..... So why not complete that Equestrian monument planned to honor Ludivico Sforza in 1493 that Leonardo da Vinci was commissioned to create beginning in the 1480's, but for many technical and political impossibilities, it never quite happened. Fast foward 500 years, and Capt. Dent is resurrecting a dream Leonardo lamented having never completed on his deathbed. As it turned out, Dent also lamented the same on his deathbed in 1994.
I met Capt. Dent in the summer of 1986 (that was an unbelievablely WOW experience, as he was building his geodesic Dome Studio) and made it perfectly clear I intended to work with him on his dream. In March, 1988 he formally invited me to begin sculpting the eight foot life sized Horse! What an adventure that became!
We (Dent and I) based the conception of this horse on the extant drawings and accounts of Leonardo da Vinci, as they pertained to this Sforza equestrian monument commission. We had close communications with all the leading da Vinci scholars around the world. One Japanese scholar tried to knock the wind out of Dent's dream by creating a 26 foot tall Sforza equestrian monument of his own (in white fiberglas), which was unveiled in Nagoya, Japan in 1989! On April 19th, 1991, for breakfast and discussion, 40 of the world's leading scholars gathered together in the Dome Studio around the sculpture I made in the photo above (including that one scholar from Japan), during an international symposium held in honor the Horse sculpture at Lehigh University. Wow, Wow, wow is allI can say about that day! I felt so humbled in the presence of these scholars and art historians.
At this point, the sculpture seemed complete, so there was not much else for me to be employed about this project. It was still difficult to raise the several million dollars needed to cast this beast in bronze, and unfortunately Capt. Dent died waiting for his dream to be fulfilled. What transpired after his passing is another whole chapter.
Below are two pictures from the spring of 1988 (sorry about their poor quality), that show the beginning of this sculpture: a cartoon after Leonardo scaled to life size, and the armature under construction.
Wow, I really have hijacked this Art & Antiques thread now! (Sorry!)
Garth
Hybrid Mode
