6

Studies of Horses.

(WINDSOR LIBRARY.)

Duke Francesco Sforza died in 1466, but it was not till 1472 that his successor, Galeazzo Maria, conceived the project of giving the founder of the House of Sforza a monument worthy of him, a tomb which, like that of the Scaligeri at Verona, should be surmounted by an equestrian statue of the deceased hero. For ten long years artist after artist was consulted, plan after plan submitted and rejected. On the refusal or the retirement from the contest of the brothers Mantegazza, the gifted sculptors of the Certosa at Pavia, Galeazzo Maria applied to the famous Florentine sculptor and painter, Antonio del Pollajuolo. After his death. in 1498 "they found the design and the model which he had made for the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, ordered by Lodovico il Moro. This model is represented in two different styles in his drawings now in my collection : the one showing Duke Francesco with Verona under his feet, the other, the same Duke in full

EQUESTRIAN BAS-RELIEF BY LEONARDO DA PRATO (1511).
(Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Venice.)

armour riding over an armed man. I could never discover why this design was not carried out not carried out" (Vasari). (Vasari). It is this second conception which Morelli recognised in a drawing in the Print Room at Munich, whereas Louis Courajod declared it to be the sketch for Leonardo's statue. Not, adds the learned Director of the Louvre, that there is anything against the supposition that Pollajuolo

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may have seen and drawn Leonardo's model. Richter, again, suggests that this design-a horse rearing above a prostrate man -was obligatory for all the competitors. For my part, I must say, that if the drawing at Munich represents Leonardo's work, it is a singularly clumsy and ineffective rendering. Nothing could be more wooden and lifeless than the hind-quarters of the horse, and the forelegs, which are very evidently ankylosed, are equally faulty in treatment. The head and neck alone have a certain amount of spirit. As to the rider, his seat is awkward and undignified in the extreme, and the ensemble is wholly wanting in those monumental, rhythmic, one might almost say melodious lines, which were SO obviously Leonardo's main preoccupation in the drawings at Windsor.1 The study of the horse was a passion with Leonardo ; numberless drawings show him seeking to fix the noble beast's physiognomy, and analyse its movements.2

In the Adoration of the Magi, he forgets the ostensible subject, and fills up the whole of the middle distance with horses in every conceivable variety of spirited attitude. In the subsequent Battle of Anghiari he returned to his favourite theme, and created the most

1 Müller-Walde is of opinion that Pollajuolo's drawing was made in 1489-immediately after the letter to Lorenzo the Magnificent, complaining of Leonardo's incompetence (Jahrbuch der kg. Kunstsammlungen, 1897, p. 125). But one must beware of these all too convenient inferences. Things rarely happen just as we imagine-realities prove more shifting, less logical. M. de Fabriczy believes the drawing in question to refer to an equestrian statue which Pollajuolo offered to erect to Gentile Virginio Orsini in 1494 (Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, 1892, p. 250). M. de Geymüller goes still further he does not consider the Munich drawing to be worthy even of Pollajuolo (Les derniers Travaux sur Léonard de Vinci, p. 42).

A picture by Bacchiacca in the Uffizi (reproduced in my Histoire de l' Art pendant la Renaissance, vol. iii. p. 697) shows striking analogies with the Munich drawing, except that the horse's head, instead of being in profile as in the drawing, is turned toward the spectator, a detail which gives a singular look of animation to the composition. Bacchiacca's horse, too, rears firmly up on its hind legs, instead of seeming to sink under its burden, and the rider is not bare-headed, but wears a cap. This rearing horse-a reminiscence of the Colossi of Monte Cavallo is a very favourite motive in sixteenth century art: we meet with it in Raphael's St. George of the Louvre, in his Meeting between S. Leo and Attila, and The Victory of Constantine: also in Ducerceau's chimney pieces at Ecouen, etc.

2 In his first attempt, Leonardo seems to have given his horses squat, disjointed forms-witness the studies of horses and cats in the Library at Windsor. This, too, is his type in a drawing of the Deluge (Richter, vol. i. pl. xxxiv). But what movement, what fire, what passion he puts into his heroic steeds later on!