The original mould by Leonardo da Vinci's 1508 sculpture study "Horse and Rider" is touring North America and the UK in the first-ever public exhibition of a three-dimensional work by the Renaissance master.
After da Vinci completed the Mona Lisa in 1507, he began work on a sculpture of a military figure on a bucking horse modelled after his benefactor Charles d'Amboise. The sculpture was never cast by Da Vinci and the mould is the only known three-dimensional work to be created by the Renaissance master. It is believed to contain a fingerprint of the artist, although there is no way to prove that the fingerprint is in fact Da Vinci's. When he died in 1519, the beeswax sculpture passed to his protégé Francesco Melzi, whose family held onto the piece until World War II.
A group of businessmen went in search of the fabled 30cm-by-30cm-by-18cm wax sculpture in the 1980s, but the buyer, American businessman Richard A. Lewis, only had it authenticated by the world's top da Vinci scholar, Dr. Carlo Pedretti, and cast in metal in recent years.
"Horse and Rider" will be displayed, along with a metal casting, contemporaneous sketches by da Vinci, through the 15th of October as part of the "Da Vinci - The Genius" exhibit at the Imagine Exhibitions Gallery at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.
The American Fine Arts Foundry, which cast the metal versions of the sculpture for Lewis, has made several hundred additional metal castings in bronze and silver that are available to collectors for $25,000 to $35,000 through the art dealer Art Encounter. One million dollars of the proceeds from the sculpture sales will be donated to charity.
After the exhibit at the Venetian, the original wax sculpture and its metal casting will be exhibited in New York and London.
