Leonardo’s Horse . . . Well, Sort of

Five hundred years ago, legend has it, French archers crushed Leonardo da Vinci’s dream of creating a monumental bronze horse when they used his clay model for target practice.

Two decades ago, a retired American pilot named Charles Dent read a magazine article about “The Horse That Never Was” and decided “Let’s give Leonardo his horse!”

Now, finally, it’s happening.

The 24-foot-tall “Il Cavallo” (the Horse), based on Leonardo’s drawings, will go on view this weekend outside the Tallix sculpture foundry before being dismantled and shipped to Milan for permanent display as a gift to the Italian people from Leonardo da Vinci’s Horse Inc., a nonprofit organization Dent created.

The final destination may not be what Leonardo, or Dent imagined--the huge bronze will be the centerpiece of a new cultural park at a racetrack. But after all these years . . . well, no one’s looking this gift horse in the mouth.

“It shows that Americans have a system that allows dreams to come true,” said Salvatore Carruba, the Milan city official for culture.

All it took was $6.5 million, one failed design, one sad footnote--Dent’s death--and some basic redefinition: Perhaps it shouldn’t be called “Leonardo’s da Vinci’s horse,” after all.

“Originally, [Dent and his followers] wanted to make a re-creation of Leonardo’s horse,” said New York sculptor Nina Akamu, who crafted the final design.

“The problem was . . . the Italians looked at it a different way: ‘Who are you to be doing a statue of our genius’ horse?’ ”

“This is not a re-creation,” Akamu said of the final product. “It’s a tribute to Leonardo.”

Some say that the Italian inventor and artist cried on his deathbed, in 1519, because he had not been able to complete his horse. Scholars caution that much of the story is based on conjecture, but it seems clear that the creator of the “Mona Lisa” spent more than a decade planning such a project.

“It was just as important to him as ‘The Last Supper,’ ” said historian Carlo Pedretti, who founded the Center for Leonardo Studies at UCLA. “He was working on them at the same time, and was planning to cast the horse [until] unfortunate political circumstances prevented him from doing it.”

Commissioned by Patron

The 24-foot horse had been commissioned in 1482 by Leonardo’s Milanese patron, Duke Lodovico Sforza, to be the largest equestrian statue in the world. Leonardo created a full-scale earthen model and rounded up 80 tons of bronze so it could be cast.

Then came those “unfortunate circumstances”--hostilities with France. The duke decided the bronze was better used for cannonballs. And when the French invaded Milan in 1499, archers occupying the patron’s home, Sforza Castle, reportedly pulled out their bows and fired at the model.

Monsignor Sabba da Castiglione, one supposed eyewitness, wrote in his memoirs that Leonardo “engaged himself with the form of the horse of Milan and did so for 16 continuous years. . . . But the ignorance and negligence of some . . . allowed it to be shamefully ruined.”

Enter Dent, centuries later.

He was a dapper former United Airlines pilot who liked to collect art and do amateur sculpting. He also loved Italy. So when he read a 1977 National Geographic account of the ill-fated “Il Cavallo,” he set out to give the Italians a gift on the order of what the French had done in bestowing the Statue of Liberty on the United States.

“Charlie wanted to do this grand gesture and honor Leonardo and the Italian people for the renaissance,” said Rod Skidmore, an advertising man who became the project’s artistic director.

Dent bought a farm in Fogelsville, Pa., so he could create models. He also brought in champion Morgan horses as inspiration.

A basic problem was that Leonardo had left no clear designs. He sketched many horses over the years, including drawings discovered in the “Codex Madrid” notebooks found in 1965, some as small as 1-by-1 inch.

Still, a committee of friends and visiting sculptors began working on a model with Dent. “In the first 17 years, many people came and went,” said Akamu. “Someone would work on the shoulder, someone else on the tail. Charlie [told them], ‘Leave your egos at the door.’ No one would get credit.”

They completed an eight-foot model by 1992, then used it to raise funds, $77,000 presented at Dent’s 77th birthday in 1994. That Christmas, he died of Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“When he knew he was at the end, he called the board,” Skidmore recalled. “We all promised that we would get the job done.”

The venture gained a bit of publicity in 1996 when the model was shipped to the Tallix foundry here and turned into a full-scale version, made of concrete-like material. Then a hitch: “It turned out to be not as good as it could be,” said Milan J. Kralik, another member of the organization’s board.

Seeing pictures of the model, some scholars commented that “the anatomy wasn’t quite perfect” and that the head was too upright--not in the classic tucked pose of a collected trot.

Called in to fix the model, sculptor Akamu--an expert on animal figures--suggested that it be scrapped entirely.

“It was very tough, because that original horse was considered to be Charlie’s horse,” said Skidmore. “So there was a lot of emotion. We just said, ‘Whoa, we’re not sitting out in Fogelsville, Pa., any longer. We’re in the eyes of the world.”

The board allowed Akamu to start from scratch. A 45-year-old who has studied around the world, including 12 years in Italy, she wanted to avoid insulting the Italians with any suggestion that she was stepping into Leonardo’s shoes.

Not that she didn’t study his drawings, and writings, to see “how he viewed nature and movement and light.” But how could you take a minuscule sketch of a horse, whose tail is “a few squiggles,” and turn that into a 12-foot three-dimensional tail?

Akamu followed her own instinct of sculpting “metaphorical animals, [whether] horses, lions or wolves.

“Carlo Pedretti says Leonardo uses [the horse] as a symbol of the highest possible human achievement. I just say it’s the power and momentum of creative energy.”

The head of her horse would have its massive head tucked down, as though fighting against an unseen rider.

Still, it was not a smooth process. Akamu said she had to hire a lawyer to insist the organization stop advertising the horse as “created by a team of sculptors.”

These days, though, there’s a sense of relief with the approaching debut of the 14-ton bronze at the foundry in this small city on the Hudson River, 90 minutes north of Manhattan. “Bon Viaggio” festivities are planned all weekend.

The sculpture, which was cast in 60 pieces, will be dismantled into seven containers for shipment to Milan. The unveiling there is Sept. 10--Pedretti’s best guess of the the exact 500th anniversary of the destruction by French archers.

Meanwhile, Tallix will be turning out a second horse for the Frederik Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Mich., whose benefactor was a major supporter of the project.

Finding the Italian home was not as easy.

“We’ve been through six mayors of Milan,” laughed board member Kralik.

Dent’s hope was to put the horse at Sforza Castle. But that’s a national monument, and “they don’t take kindly to modifications,” Kralik noted.

They also struck out with the National Museum of Science and and Technology. Even as work began on the full horse in America, there was no site for it in Milan until a corporation stepped forward recently and offered to create the cultural park at San Siro track.

The sponsor is Sindacato Nazionale Agenzie Ippiche (SNAI), Italy’s government-approved bookmaker, which owns the horse track.

“To be truthful, it’s a public relations gesture,” said Kralik.

The site, however, guarantees that millions of people will see the horse--the track is next to Milan’s soccer stadium.

Support of Milanese

Most importantly, Milan’s leaders seem to be on board. “I personally think it is a very generous deed,” said Carruba, the councilman for culture. “We have to admire Dent. I think he discovered things about Leonardo that most Milanese are not aware of.”

Dario Fertilio, a correspondent for the Milanese newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, calls the horse “a spectacular idea which also witnesses the interest in America for Leonardo, . . . the main Italian genius. . . . I haven’t heard of any negative opinion on it.”

Even so, Vittorio Sgarbi, an art critic scheduled to participate in the September ceremony, said it was “a good idea to place the statue at the hippodrome because this is not an artwork, this is a homage.”

Sculptor Akamu would dispute that appraisal. But she’s relieved the Italians seem ready to accept the gift. And she doesn’t mind the site.

“The people who own the racetrack are creating this wonderful, wonderful environment,” she said. “The horse is positioned so it looks down a four-lane road. People will be able to see it from half a mile away.”

They will have to get real close, however, to see what is etched on the animal’s eyeballs. Akamu announced what she was putting there at a gathering of the project’s supporters last year. “In the left pupil of the giant horse’s eye is inscribed the name of Charles Dent,” she said. “And in the right, the name of Leonardo da Vinci.”

“I thought it was kind of corny,” she confided recently. “But they loved it.”

*

Times researcher Maria De Cristofaro contributed to this story from Rome.