A horse in left profile, with measurements

A study of the hind-quarters and legs of a horse, in profile to the right, with a few measurements; a drawing of waving hair/flowing water?; the words 'de Lionardo'; the fore-leg and off hind-leg of a horse with measurements; in the lower half of the sheet is a study of a full-length horse in profile to the left, and measurements; a bent fore-leg and measurements, and shoulders and a fore-leg with measurements. During the 1480s Leonardo entered the service of Ludovico Sforza, the ruler (and later Duke) of Milan, initially to execute a bronze equestrian monument to Ludovico’s father Francesco. To help him to build the clay model for the monument, well over life size, Leonardo measured individual horses minutely. He notes on this study that it depicts a horse belonging to Galeazzo Sanseverino, captain-general of the Milanese army. The unit of measurement is the horse's head (testa, written by Leonardo as T), divided into sixteenths. From the clay model, Leonardo constructed a mould and built a 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. At some point in its history the folded drawing became stuck to some other surface, and subsequently lost large patches of its blue preparation in the upper half of the sheet. Text adapted from Leonardo da Vinci: A life in drawing, London, 2018