Leonardo da Vinci's "Gran Cavallo" was to have been one of Leonardo's greatest achievements, however, in 1498, an invading French army destroyed the clay pre-model finished by him at the age of 43 in 1495. In 1977 the National Geographic Magazine published an article entitled "The Horse That Never Was," describing Da Vinci's conception of the equestrian monument designed for his patron Sforza, and told the story of the destruction of his model in 1499 by an invading French army.
Art collector Charles Dent happened to read the article and dreamed of building Leonardo's Horse - Il Cavallo - and give it to the Italian people as a thank you gift for the treasures of the Renaissance. He assembled a team of Renaissance scholars, sculptors, metallurgists and individual and corporate donors and with his own funds as well, set out to make that dream come true. In August 1992, fifteen years after the NGM article, the Tallix Art Foundry succeeded in creating a full size model of Il Caravallo.
There are two videos represented here - both "home videos" - one showing the finished horse standing in Cultural Park in Milan, Italy, and the other of a presentation of the story of the sculpture. Nevertheless, these videos manage to show the scale of the status and provides insight into the extreme difficulty in recreating "Leonard's Horse."
