Study for the Equestrian Monument to Francesco Sforza

This study for the unrealized bronze equestrian monument to the Milanese duke Francesco Sforza -- one of the most ambitious sculptural monuments of the Renaissance – was made by the Florentine master Antonio Pollaiuolo, probably before the celebrated commission was awarded to Leonardo da Vinci in the mid-1480s. Renowned for his military prowess and ruthless machinations, Francesco is portrayed upon a rearing horse with its hind legs upon the ground (or pedestal) and the front of its body poised upon the figure of a trampled enemy, which provided a means of balancing the sculptural group. In addition to evoking the power and ferocity of the rider, the image of the fallen enemy also evokes ancient models such as Trajan’s coinage, which portrays the emperor upon a rearing horse trampling and spearing a fallen Dacian.


Francesco’s image as a military hero played a key role in justifying his authority as well as that of his sons and successors, Galeazzo Maria and Ludovico Sforza, both of whom exploited their father’s triumphs for their own dynastic needs. The brothers commissioned monumental painted and sculpted equestrian images of their father on an unprecedented scale. Foremost among them was the monumental bronze sculpture, which was in planning stages by the early 1470s under Galeazzo Maria, and revived by Ludovico in the early 1480s.(1) Under Ludovico’s aegis, Leonardo labored for almost two decades on the unrealized project – producing tireless notes and studies for the ambitious design and casting of the horse – until 1499, when his clay model was destroyed during the French invasion of Milan.(2)


Pollaiuolo produced two celebrated early designs for the Sforza monument (the present drawing and a sheet in the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich), and while his precise involvement in the commission is uncertain, these drawings offer unique and unexplored insight into the monument’s complex history, evolution, patronage, iconography, and political significance. They are the only extant studies to portray the monument as a whole (encompassing both horse and rider), in a detailed manner, and to include Francesco’s individualized effigy, thereby presenting a vision of the commission as a ducal portrait, rather than an equine sculpture, as Leonardo’s studies tend to emphasize. (3) While Leonardo included the figure of a rider in his metalpoint study (Windsor Castle, Royal Library, RCIN 912358) for the monument from the early to mid-1480s, its nude, inchoate form does not offer a fully formed conception of Francesco’s image. Among the numerous extant studies for the monument, Pollaiuolo’s drawings are distinct in their emphasis on Francesco, his attributes and persona as a ruler.


The identification of Pollaiuolo’s two drawings as studies for the Sforza monument stems from Vasari, who owned them and described them in his Vita of Pollaiuolo written in 1568: (4)


"[…] discovered after his [Pollaiuolo’s] death were the drawing and model he made for Ludovico Sforza for a statue of Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, on a horse: and that design is in our album in two versions: in one he has Verona beneath him, in the other he is in full armor and, above a base full of battle scenes, he makes his horse rear up over an armed man. But the reason why he did not execute these designs I have not been able to find out."(5)


The identity of the figure in the Lehman drawing has been questioned by some recent scholars, who have argued that it represents Federico da Montefeltro, the duke of Urbino. However, comparisons with documented numismatic and medallic portraits of Francesco and an examination of the drawing’s technique solidify the identity of the rider as the Milanese duke. The characterization of Francesco’s features in the Lehman drawing – with his domed forehead, slightly hooked, aquiline nose with a large nostril, bulbous chin, and dimpled cheeks – has unmistakable parallels with Gianfrancesco Enzola’s 1456 medal of Francesco, ducal coinage of 1462, and Cristoforo Caradosso Foppa’s medal of 1480. Pollaiuolo likely derived his effigy of the Milanese duke from one of these readily available sources.


The slight indent at the bridge of the nose that appears in the Lehman drawing is also found in Francesco’s numismatic and medallic effigies. It may be the falsely exaggerated appearance of this indentation in the drawing, due to the interrupted pen line, that has led to the identification of Federico, renowned for the deformation of the bridge of his nose.(6) It has remained unacknowledged that in the Lehman sheet, the indent of the nose appears more pronounced due to Pollaiuolo’s course method of administering the series of pricked holes along the outlines of the drawing (which aided in transferring the design to a sheet placed below, when dusted with charcoal -- a process known as pouncing or spolvero). (7) The indent appears exaggerated due to the misalignment between the holes and the drawing, and the varying thickness of the pen line in rendering Francesco’s profile. While the profile is strongly re-enforced by the pen line along the forehead and most of the nose, it is thinner from the chin to the lower nose and at the bridge of the nose. A comparison with portraits of Federico da Montefeltro– whose nose is not just slightly indented at the bridge but entirely absent – reveals the distinction between these features. Since the indented upper nose is clearly present in Francesco’s documented portraits, and the other facial characteristics in the Lehman sheet perfectly align with those of the Milanese duke in medallic and numismatic examples, the rider in the Lehman sheet can be none other than Francesco Sforza.


The commission for the equestrian monument unfolded over the course of three decades, and while the earliest secure reference dates to 1472, it is possible that the project had even earlier roots. A funerary monument to Francesco conceived by his consort Bianca Maria following his death in 1466 could possibly mark the origins of the commission. Although there is no documentation attesting to its form, it is possible that Bianca Maria envisioned Francesco’s tomb as an equestrian figure, paralleling those of early Milanese rulers, such as Bernabò and Gian Galeazzo Visconti. On 21 September 1466, Nicodemo Tranchedini, the Milanese ambassador, wrote to Bianca Maria: ‘I have not forgotten about the designs you have asked me to get for the tomb of your husband, our most illustrious lord. But because of many serious matters we had had here, Piero [de Medici] has not been able to attend to it in peace. But he has said that he will find time to have those masters and experts and to satisfy your highness’.(8) Bianca Maria’s request to Piero de’ Medici is suggestive of her early role in the Sforza monument, given that Galeazzo Maria and Ludovico also requested Florentine artists from the Medici to assist in its production.


The first secure reference to the equestrian monument dates to 1472, when Galeazzo Maria attempted to commission a marble sculpture from the Pavian sculptors Cristoforo and Antonio Mantegazza, who were currently at work on the Certosa di Pavia, but they turned it down. (9) However, by 1473, Galeazzo Maria’s sights were more ambitious and he envisioned a lie-size bronze monument (not a tomb), requiring an artist from outside of Milan. He arranged a competition for the commission, and around this time, described his wishes for the monument in a letter of 26 November 1473, probably not coincidentally, the same year that the humanist Francesco Filelfo finally completed his epic biography of Francesco. Galeazzo wrote his well-known letter to the commissario of ducal works Bartolomeo Gadio da Cremona:


"Because we wish to have the image of the illustrious lord our father, in bronze on horseback, and place it in some part of our castle in Milan, or on the drawbridge facing the piazza or somewhere else where it will look well, we wish and command that you search in this our city to see whether there is a master who knows how to make such a work and if there is none who is able, inquire whether there is someone who could do it in another city […]. We wish this image and horse to be made as large as the person of his lordship and that the horse should be of good size, and having found a master, tell us and let us know how much it will cost including the metal and the workmanship and any other expense; therefore look in Rome and Florence and all the other cities where such workmanship might be found." (10)


Galeazzo Maria’s words emphasize the monument’s status as a ducal portrait, specifying its life-size proportions as well as an undetermined but highly prominent location. Additional correspondence indicates that the monument was to be gilded in the manner of the Marcus Aurelius monument.(11) It is possible that Pollaiuolo was among the Florentine artists considered for the commission at this early stage of the project and that he produced the Lehman sheet during this period as a proposal for Galeazzo Maria.


Galeazzo Maria’s impetus to commission an equestrian image of his father, which simultaneously bolstered his own military might, celebrated the solidarity of the Sforza dynasty, and emphasized Milan’s supremacy, may have been a reaction to the equestrian monument that his father’s rival, the Venetian condottiere Bartolommeo Colleoni, was planning in his own honor in the early 1470s.(12) However, plans for the monument to Francesco were interrupted by Galeazzo Maria’s assassination in 1476, and resumed in 1479 under the aegis of Ludovico, when he seized control and assumed the regency of the state.


Having returned from exile in 1479 and usurped the throne from his young nephew Gian Galeazzo (Galeazzo Maria’s son), Ludovico strove to emphasize his status as Francesco’s only direct and rightful heir. The equestrian monument was of central concern to Ludovico immediately after he assumed control of the state. Between 1481 and 1483, when Leonardo arrived in Milan from Florence, he composed his celebrated letter seeking employment at the Sforza court, in which he expressed his desire to carry out the equestrian monument to Francesco: ‘the work on the bronze horse could still be undertaken, which shall be to the immortal glory and eternal honor, in happy memory, of the lord, your father, and of the illustrious house of Sforza’.(13) According to Sabba da Castiglione’s Ricordi of 1546, by 1499 Leonardo had been working on the Sforza monument for sixteen years, placing his initiation of the project around 1483.(14) However, in the early 1490s, the challenges of casting the horse in a rearing pose prompted Leonardo to opt for a traditional striding stance.(15) By that time, Leonardo’s model had grown to 23 feet 11 inches high, from the ground to the back of the neck, therefore not including the figure of Francesco.(16) Since Galeazzo Maria specified his desire for a life-size sculpture of his father, at least as of 1473, the enormous scale of Leonardo’s model (three times life size) may reflect Ludovico’s wishes to vastly enlarge the monument as a colossal homage to his own power and that of the dynasty’s founder.


Alison Manges Nogueira 2019


(1) Among the extensive scholarship on the Sforza monument and Leonardo’s related studies (especially drawings in the Royal Collection at Windsor, Manuscript C (2174, Institut de France, Paris) and the Madrid Codices (Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid), see A. Bernardoni, ‘Leonardo and his Equestrian Monuments: Issues of Casting and Technique’, in Leonardo da Vinci 1452–1519: The Design of the World, ed. by P.C. Marani and M.T. Fiorio, exh. cat. Milan, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2015, pp. 143–153, figs IV.2.1–IV.3.14; M. Castelli, Il Gran Cavallo di Leonardo da Vinci: Mito, Storia, Attualità, Milan, 2012; L. Syson, Leonardo da Vinci. Painter at the Court of Milan. exh. cat. London, National Gallery, London, 2011, pp. 30–4; G.M. Radke and D.J. Stine, ‘An Abiding Obsession: Leonardo’s Equestrian Projects 1507–1519’, in Leonardo da Vinci and the Art of Sculpture, ed. by G. M. Radke, Atlanta, 2009, pp. 137–154; A. Bernardoni, Leonardo e il monumento equestre a Francesco Sforza: Storia di un’opera mai realizzata, Florence, 2007; Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman, ed. by C.C. Bambach et al., with the assistance of R. Stern and A. Manges [Nogueira], exh. cat. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2003, pp. 274–277, 397–400, 426–429, 430–435; Leonardo da Vinci’s Sforza Monument Horse, ed. by D. Cole Ahl, London, 1995; L. Fusco and G. Corti, ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici on the Sforza Monument’, Achademia Leonardi Vinci: Journal of Leonardo Studies and Bibliography of Vinciana, 5, 1992, pp. 11–32; C. Pedretti, I cavalli di Leonardo: studi sul cavallo e altri animali di Leonardo da Vinci dalla Biblioteca reale nel Castello di Windsor, exh. cat. Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, 1984, especially pp. 47–53, cat. nos: 16–21b; J. Spencer, ‘Il progetto per il cavallo di bronzo per Francesco Sforza’, Arte lombarda, 38–39, 1973, pp. 23–35; idem, ‘Sources of Leonardo da Vinci’s Sforza Monument’, Évolution générale et développements régionaux en histoire de l’art, ed. by G. Rózsa (Acts of the 22nd International Congress of the History of Art, Budapest, 1969), Budapest, 1972, vol. II, pp. 735–742.

(2) In November of 1494, as Charles VIII of France was entering Milan on his way to Naples, Ludovico Sforza sent the bronze, originally allocated for the monument, to his father-in-law, Ercole d’Este, to make canons; Leonardo continued work on the colossal clay model until 1499, when it was destroyed by French soldiers during Louis XII’s invasion of Milan; Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman, p. 233.

(3) For the Lehman and Munich drawings, see especially A. Galli in Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo, ed. by A. Di Lorenzo and A. Galli, exh. cat. Milan, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, 2014–2015, cat. no. 22, pp. 232–235 (in which the Lehman drawing is attributed to the workshop of Antonio Pollaiuolo); P. Marani in Leonardo da Vinci 1452–1519: The Design of the World, p. 135; A. Wright in Donatello, Michelangelo, Cellini: Sculptors’ Drawings from Renaissance Italy, ed. by M. Cole, exh. cat. Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, 2014, cat. no. 6, pp. 139–41; K. Zeitler in Dürer to de Kooning: 100 Master Drawings from Munich, exh. cat. New York, Morgan Library and Museum, New York, 2012–2013, cat. no. 3, pp. 24–25; A. Ballarin, Leonardo a Milano: Problemi di Leonardismo Milanese tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio prima della pala Casio, con la collaborazione di M. Menegatti e B. M. Savy, Verona, 2010, vol. I, pp. 231–232; A. Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers: the Arts of Florence and Rome, New Haven, 2005, pp. 137–143, Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman, cat. no. 11, pp. 474–477; F. Poletti, Antonio e Piero Pollaiuolo, Milan, 2001, pp. 72–34; A. Forlani Tempesti, The Robert Lehman Collection. Italian Fifteenth- to Seventeenth Century Drawings. Volume V, New York, 1991, pp. 197–202, cat. no. 69; C.　C. Bambach, Drawings and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop: Theory and Practice, 1300–1600, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 328–329, fig. 278; L. Vertova, Maestri toscani del Quattro e primo Cinquecento: Finiguerra, Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, Lorenzo di Credi, Francesco di Simone Ferrucci, Francesco di Giorgio, Leonardo, Florence, 1981, pp. 45–48, no. 7b; P. Halm et al., Hundert Meister-Zeichnungen aus der Staatlichen Graphischen Sammlung München, Munich, 1958, p. 26, pl. II.

(4) The drawings’ illustrious provenance and their association with the Sforza monument were proposed during the late-nineteenth and the early-twentieth centuries. In 1877, the Munich sheet was described as a copy of a lost drawing by Leonardo for the Sforza monument and was attributed a few years later to Antonio Pollaiuolo by Giovanni Morelli, who identified it with Vasari’s passage. L. Courajod, ‘Document inédit sur la statue de Francesco Sforza modelée par Leonardo de Vinci’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1877, ser. 2, 16, pp. 422–426; G. Morelli [Ivan Lermolieff, pseud.], Die Werke italienischer Meister in den Galerien von München, Dresden und Berlin, trans. by J. Schwarze, Leipzig, 1880, pp. 106–115. In 1934, Simon Meller, refered to the discovery of the Lehman drawing the year before, and identified it as the pendant to the Munich version. S. Meller, ‘Antonio Pollaiuolo tervrajzai Francesco Sforza lovasszobrához’, in Hommage à Alexis Petrovics, Budapest, 1934, pp. 76–79 (Italian translation, pp. 204–205); Tempesti, The Robert Lehman Collection, p. 201, n. 3.

(5) ‘E si trovò dopo la morte sua il disegno e modello che a Lodovico Sforza egli aveva fatto per la statua a cavallo di Francesco Sforza duca di Milano; il quale disegno è nel nostro libro in due modi: in uno egli ha sotto Verona, nell’altro egli, tutto armato e sopra un basamento pieno di battaglie, fa saltare il cavallo addosso a uno armato. Ma la cagione perché non mettesse questi disegni in opera non ho già potuto sapere’, G. Vasari, Le vite de’ piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. by R. Bettarini, Florence, 1966–1987, vol. III, p. 507. On Vasari’s album of drawings, his libro de’ disegni, see L. Ragghianti Collobi, Il Libro de’ Disegni del Vasari. Florence, 1974, vol. I, p. 78, vol. II, figs 208–209.

(6) Wright in Donatello, Michelangelo, Cellini, cat. no. 6, pp. 139–140. Wright supports Caroline Elam’s theory (proposed during a presentation given by Wright on Pollaiuolo’s portrait sculpture at University College, London) that the Lehman horseman depicts Federico da Montefeltro (Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers, pp. 140, 142); Galli in Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo, p. 235, does not support the identification of the Lehman rider as Federico da Montefeltro; however he argues that a difference in quality between the sheets signifies that the Lehman version was produced by Pollaiuolo’s workshop; see also C. Strehlke, review of Anna Forlani Tempesti, The Robert Lehman Collection. Italian Fifteenth- to Seventeenth- Century Drawings, Master Drawings, vol. XXXII, no. 4, 1994, p. 386.

(7) Bambach, Drawings and Painting, pp. 328–329, fig. 278, Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman, p. 276.

(8) ‘Non me sono scordato, quanto me comesse vostra Celsitudine de li desegni per la sepultura del illustrissimo Signore quondam vostro consorte, ma le occupatione grandissime habiamo havuto non hanno permesso che Piero ce habia possuto attendere cum l’animo reposato tamen me dice che pigliara tempo ad havere questi maestri et altri intendente a satisfare a vostra Celsitudine’, Nicodemo Tranchedini to Bianca Maria Visconti, Florence, 21 September 1466 (Paris, BnF, 1591, 377); Welch, Art and Authority, p. 195. According to Simonetta, Rinascimento segreto, p. 166, the date of the document is 1466, not 1468, as indicated by Welch.

(9) J. Pope-Hennessy, Italian Renaissance Sculpture, London, 1996, p. 207; G.　L. Calvi, Architetti, scultori, e pittori che fiorino in Milano durante il governo dei Visconti e degli Sforza, Milan, 1865, vol. II, p. 34; Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers, p. 140, n. 130.

(10) ‘Perché voressimo far fare la imagine del Illustrissimo Signore nostro pater de bona memorea de bronzo a cavallo et metterlo in qualche parte de quello nostro castello di Milano o li nel revelino verso la piazza o altrove dove stesse bene volemo et commettemo che tu fare concorre per quelle nostra città se la fosse maestro che sapesse fare questa opera et lavorarla in metallo. E se in dicta nostra città non se trovassa maestro che la sapesse fare conviene che tu investighi de intendere et sapere se in altra città et parte se trovasse maestro che sapesse fare questo ma el vole essere fatto che forzo cheta imagine et cavallo tanto bene quanto se possa dire. La quale imagine sia grande quanto era la persona de soa Signoria et el cavallo sia de bona grandeza et trovandosi tale maestro ne avisse et cosí ancora ne avise quanto potria montare questa spesa computato mettallo maestiero et ogni altra cosa per che volemo si vedi ad roma fiorenza et ogni altre città se trovasse questro maestro che sia eccellenti per effecto in questa opera’ (Milan, Archivio di Stato, Reg. miss. 12, fols 355v–356r); Welch, Art and Authority, p. 196; see Fusco and Corti, ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici on the Sforza Monument’, pp. 11–32.

(11) Welch, Art and Authority, p. 196.

(12) E. Welch, Art and Society in Renaissance Italy 1350–1500, New York, 1997, p. 233. While the monument was eventually carried out by Verrocchio, Pollaiuolo has been identified, along with Leonardo, as an early candidate for one of the three unnamed sculptors who, according to documentary evidence, submitted designs for the Colleoni commission in the early 1480s (A. Butterfield, The Sculptures of Andrea del Verrocchio, New Haven, 1997, p. 167). Thus, Pollaiuolo may have been simultaneously considered as a candidate for both the Sforza and Colleoni monuments, which were conceived of and designed around the same time. Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers, pp. 140–141; Butterfield, The Sculptures of Andrea del Verrocchio, pp. 165–167.

(13) ‘Ancora si potrà dare opera al cauallo di bronzo, che sarà gloria i[m]mortale e eterno onore della felice memoria del signore vostro padre e dela i[n]cljta casa Sforzesca’, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 1082r; J.P. Richter, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci Compiled and Edited from the Original Manuscripts, London, 1970, vol. II, pp. 325–327.

(14) Sabba da Castiglione, Riccordi overo ammaestrament di monsignore Sabba Castiglione, Venice: Apresso Nicolò Polo, 1592, no. 109, fol. 106r.

(15) The difficulty of executing a monumental bronze sculpture in a rearing pose was already a concern in 1489, and Ludovico appears to have doubted whether the monument could be cast. Fusco and Corti, ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici on the Sforza Monument’, p. 16, Florence, Archivio di Stato, Mediceo Avanti il Principato, 50, 155. See Fusco and Corti, ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici on the Sforza Monument’, pp. 16ff for a documented history of the Sforza monument in the late 1480s and 1490s. Fusco and Corti, and more recently Bernardoni, have suggested that it was during this period (around 1489), that Pollaiuolo produced the Lehman and Munich drawings in response to Ludovico’s request. Fusco and Corti, ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici on the Sforza Monument’, p. 18; Bernardoni, Leonardo e il monumento equestre, p. 99.

(16) According to Fra Luca Pacioli’s De divina proportione of 1498; Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman, p. 430.


　

　

　

Inscription: Annotated in pen and brown ink at right in a sixteenth-century hand: Gatamel

Giorgio Vasari, Florence, Rome and Arezzo; Simon Meller, Budapest and Paris (?); Philip Hofer, Cambridge, Massachusetts (by 1934); acquired from Philip Hofer by Robert Lehman in 1948.

Licia Ragghianti Collobi. Il libro de' disegni del Vasari. Vol. 2 vols., Florence, 1974, vol. 2, p. 78, p. 104, fig. 209 .

Walter Liedtke. The Royal Horse and Rider: Painting, Sculpture, and Horsemanship, 1500–1800. New York, 1989, p. 164, no. 26.

Carmen C. Bambach. Drawing and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop: Theory and Practice, 1300–1600. Cambridge, 1999, pp. 57, 95, 96, 394 n. 149, no. 86.

Alison Wright. The Pollaiuolo Brothers: The Arts of Florence and Rome. New Haven, 2005, pp. 137-143, 510-511. at. 18. Fig. 105.

"Dürer to de Kooning: 100 master drawings from Munich ". Exh. cat.2012, pp. 24-25, no. 3.