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News of a beeswax sculpture
No, not that kind of mold that grows in your bathroom…a sculptural mold,one designed by the famed Leonardo da Vinci. It had been in a private family for many centuries before being bought by a collector in the 1980s. Unusual, since Leonardo is otherwise known solely for his paintings and sketches, rather than for his sculpture. Here is the story:http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/exclusive-500-old-leonardo-da-vinci-sculpture-horse-201456519.htmlWhen I first read the article, I thought that the picture of the horse and rider was the product of Leonardo. It is not. It is a modern casting created using Leonardo'smoldbeeswax sculpture, from which a mold was created, which is pictured at the bottom. The story was kind of misleading.Funny – today I showed it to my advisor (area is Italian Renaissance art) and my officemate (doing his dissertation on Michelangelo) and both of them thought there's no way it could be a Leonardo, based on style. It seems that there's a lack of attention to the details of the horse – muscles, mane, tail, naturalism in movement, etc. – that can be seen even in Leonardo's sketches (see below). My advisor said that Pedretti, the Leonardo da Vinci “expert” at UCLA, has written some good things in the past but is now kind of out there (i.e. his conclusions are not really reliable).
