“‘Il Cavallo,’ the huge equine statue Leonardo Da Vinci never got to make, wasn’t plagued by technical problems as was widely believed, a new multidisciplinary research has revealed.
On the contrary, Da Vinci’s plan for the largest equestrian statue in the world was a perfectly feasible project which, if completed, would have probably been his greatest legacy, more than ”The Last Supper” or any other work.
Commissioned in 1482 by Lodovico Sforza, duke of Milan, in honor of his father Francesco, the massive bronze horse took Leonardo 17 years of research, but was never completed.
Indeed, when the full-scale clay model was finally ready to be cast in a single operation in 1499, all the needed bronze was used to make cannons for an imminent war against the King of France.
The molds were lost and the clay model was reduced to rubble by the invading French soldiers.
Although Leonardo never stopped mourning the ‘horse-that-never-was,’ engineers have always believed the daring plan to make the largest single-pouring cast ever would have failed because of technical problems.”
Read more at Discovery News (thanks, ReliegiousMarie)
wow! imagine all the davinci codes that woulda held!
Shame……
LC x
“The 3D models showed that the molten bronze would have filled the molds needed for the huge statue in less than 165 seconds and all that metal would have weighed 70 tons — exactly the amount that Leonardo had calculated.”
To think that Leonardo calculated that 500 years ago with just ink and paper is astonishing….
Bad article. At the end it states:
“Now that our research has proved that Leonardo’s project was feasible, we are planning to finally cast his horse right in the town where he wanted it to stand,” Galluzzi said.”
The horse WAS built. A decade ago two versions of the horse were built and paid for by Fed Meijer. One of them resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan at the Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park and the other one is in Milan. Of course, you won’t find any Italians talking about how an Asian American sculptor and a Rich Dutch American store owner were the ones who finished it.