Leonardo's Horse: One of the casualties when the French invaded Italy in 1499 was Leonardo da Vinci's great clay model for "il Cavallo". Leonardo never replicated the maquet, and the bronze that the Duke of Milan had set aside for the horse was made into cannons to fight the French. So no horse. But in 1982, Charles Dent, an American da Vinci enthusiast founded the non-profit Leonardo da Vinci's Horse, Inc., to finally realize Leonardo's dream. A new model, based on da Vinci's specifications and drawings, was made by American artists led by sculptress Nina Akamu. Two castings were made, one for Milan and the second for the Frederick Meijer sculpture park in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (Meijer paid for both castings). The Milan horse was unveiled on September 10, 1999, exactly five hundred years after the destruction of Leonardo's clay model. The Cedar Rapids horse will be unveiled on October 10. Read about the project at: http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues98/sep98/leonardo.html

or at: http://www.meijergardens.org/horse_story.htm

or at: http://www.leonardoshorse.org/site.html

Or you can order your own horse, direct from the foundry, in various sizes, from small (5 inches) for $750 to really, realy large (12 feet) for $1,000,000: http://www.tallix.com/ilcav_orderform.html