The Horse That Couldn’t Stand

Image: Leonardo da Vinci, Study of the Equestrian Monument for Francesco Sforza, Blvgari Hotel Milano

The Sforza family had spent years searching for an artist capable of creating a monumental equestrian statue honoring Francesco Sforza. Multiple artists proposed designs featuring a horse rearing on its hind legs with a mounted rider representing the elder Sforza. Although many brilliant designs were sketched, no one found a satisfactory way to support the immense weight of a bronze sculpture balanced on only two legs (Bush, 1978).

Eventually, news of the Sforzas' engineering dilemma reached Florence. Leonardo da Vinci was completing several artistic commissions, but he longed for a patron who would support not only his paintings but his engineering, scientific, and artistic ambitions. In 1482, he wrote to Ludovico Sforza, the future Duke of Milan, presenting himself not as a painter first, but as a military engineer, inventor, and architect before mentioning his artistic abilities (Konieczny, 2018).

Most of the previous designs required an object or an additional figure to support the horse. Proposed designs included fallen logs, tree stumps, or even enemies being crushed beneath the horse (Bush, 1978). Leonardo boldly claimed that he could design and create a sculpture of a rearing horse without any of these supporting details, which he believed distracted from the horse itself. His sketches depict only the horse and rider, exactly as the Sforzas had envisioned (Bush, 1978).

Despite Leonardo's confidence, the engineering challenge proved more difficult than it first appeared. As he continued refining his sketches, he gradually discovered the same structural limitations that had frustrated earlier artists. A bronze horse rearing on only its hind legs required enormous strength at just two points of contact with the ground. The very feature that made the monument so dramatic also made it dangerously unstable (Bush, 1978).

Leonardo now faced a decision. He could preserve the rearing horse the Sforzas had originally envisioned, or he could abandon the design and begin searching for another solution (Bush, 1978).  That choice would ultimately reshape one of the most ambitious sculpture projects of the Renaissance. It also marked the beginning of the next chapter in the story of the Sforza Horse.

Further Reading

Bush, Virginia I. (1978). Leonardo's Sforza Monument and

Cinquecento Sculpture. Arte Lombarda, 50, 47–68.

Konieczny, Peter. (2018). Leonardo da Vinci as Military

Engineer. Medieval Warfare, 7(6), 46–47.