Late in life Leonardo planned a third equestrian monument, following on from the abandoned monument to Francesco Sforza (see RCIN 912357, 912358) and the unexecuted Trivulzio monument (RCIN 912353, 912355, 912356). The only evidence of this putative late project is a coherent group of drawings studying a rearing or pacing horse (with or without a rider) and the anatomy of the horse. All are drawn on French paper in Leonardo’s delicate late style, in black chalk occasionally reinforced with pen and ink.

Though he knew the form of the horse intimately, he felt the need to study it afresh, as he had for the early Adorations (eg. RCIN 912324, 912325), the Sforza monument, and the Battle of Anghiari (eg. RCIN 912330, 912340). Some of these are formally laid out, such as RCIN 912303. Other drawings in the series may appear casually done from the life, such as RCIN 912313 of a raised left hind leg from four viewpoints, but this is exactly the intended pose of the sculpture. The main study is supremely elegant, the smooth contours hatched and crosshatched with curving lines that follow the form of the body. The cruder pen drawing at upper left corresponds exactly with a retouched study for one of the early Adorations (RCIN 912311), in which the metalpoint was drawn almost 40 years earlier but the outlines were redrawn in pen in this same late style, demonstrating that to the end of his life Leonardo continued to refer to his earliest drawings.

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