A study of a horse, standing full-face; the chest is carefully modelled, and the head is more slightly indicated. Melzi's number 129.

In the mid-1480s Ludovico Sforza, the ruler (though not yet Duke) of Milan, commissioned Leonardo to make a bronze equestrian monument to his father Francesco. To help him build the clay model for the monument, well over life size, Leonardo measured individual horses minutely and drew them in a variety of poses – here in a strict frontal view, in the manner of an architectural drawing. From the clay model, Leonardo constructed a mould and built an entire foundry to execute the casting. But in 1494 the 75 tons of bronze assembled for the casting was requisitioned to make cannon, and the project was suspended. Five years later French forces took Milan and deposed Ludovico, and Leonardo’s model for the horse was used for target practice by the French troops and destroyed.

Text adapted from Leonardo da Vinci: A life in drawing, London, 2018