From the beginning of his residence with Ludovico his combina tion of unprecedented mechanical ingenuity with apt allegoric invention and courtly charm had made him the directing spirit in all court ceremonies and festivities. Meanwhile he was filling his note-books as busily as ever with the results of his studies in statics and dynamics, in human anatomy, geometry and the phenomena of light and shade. It is probable that from the first he had not forgotten his great task of the Sforza monu ment, with its attendant researches in equine movement and anatomy, and in the science and art of bronze casting on a great scale. The many existing sketches for the work (of which the chief collection is at Windsor) cannot be distinctly dated. In 149o, the seventh year of his residence at Milan, after some expressions of impatience on the part of his patron, he had all but got his model ready for display on the occasion of the mar riage of Ludovico with Beatrice d'Este, but at the last moment was dissatisfied with what he had done and determined to begin all over again.
In the same year, 149o, Leonardo enjoyed some months of uninterrupted mathematical and physical research in the libraries and among the learned men of Pavia, whither he had been called to advise on some architectural difficulties concerning the cathe dral. Here also the study of an ancient equestrian monument (the so-called Regisole, destroyed in 1796) gave him fresh ideas for his Francesco Sforza. The following years the ever-increasing gaiety and splendour of the Milanese court gave him continual employment as a masque and pageant-master and in the composi tion and recitation of jests, tales, fables and "prophecies" (i.e., moral and social satires and allegories cast in the future tense) ; among his mss. occur the drafts of many such, some of them both profound and pungent.
Bronze of Francesco Sforza.—Meanwhile he was again at work upon the monument to Francesco Sforza, and this time to practical purpose. When ambassadors from Austria came to Milan towards the close of 1493, the finished colossal model, 26 ft. high, was at last in its place in the courtyard of the Castello. Con temporary accounts attest the magnificence of the work and the enthusiasm it excited, but are not precise enough to enable us to judge to which of the two main groups of extant sketches its design corresponded. One of these groups shows the horse and rider in relatively tranquil march, in the manner of the Gatte malata monument put up so years before by Donatello at Padua and the Colleoni monument on which Verocchio was now engaged at Venice. Another group of sketches shows the horse galloping
or rearing in violent action, in some instances in the act of trampling a fallen enemy. Neither is it possible to discriminate with certainty the sketches intended for the Sforza monument from others which Leonardo may have done in view of another and later commission for an equestrian statue, namely, that in honour of Ludovico's great enemy, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio.
The year 1494 was one of special importance in the prodi giously versatile activities of Leonardo da Vinci. Documents show him, among other things, planning during an absence of several months from the city vast new engineering works for improving the irrigation and water-ways of the Lomellina and adjacent regions of the Lombard plain; ardently studying phenomena of storm and lightning, of river action and of mountain co-operating with his friend, Donato- Bramante, the great archi tect, in fresh designs for the improvement and embellishment of the Castello at Milan; and petitioning the duke to secure him proper payment for a Madonna lately executed with the help of his pupil, Ambrogio de Predis, for the brotherhood of the Con ception of St. Francis at Milan. (This is almost certainly the fine, slightly altered second version of the "Virgin of the Rocks," now in the National Gallery, London. The original and earlier version is one of the glories of the Louvre, and shows far more of a Florentine and less of a Milanese character than the London picture.) In the same year, or early in the next, Leonardo, if Vasari is to be trusted, paid a visit to Florence to take part in deliberations concerning the projected new council-hall to be constructed in the palace of the Signory.
"Last Supper" (Cenacolo).—Recent research has proved that it was in 1494 that Leonardo got to work in earnest on what was to prove not only by far his greatest but by far his most expedi tiously and steadily executed work in painting. This was the "Last Supper" undertaken for the refectory of the convent church of Sta. Maria Belle Grazie at Milan on the joint commission (as it would appear) of Ludovico and of the monks themselves. This picture, the world-famous "Cenacolo" of Leonardo, has been the subject of much erroneous legend and much misdirected experiment. The intensity of intellectual and manual application which Leonardo threw into the work is proved by the fact that he finished it within four years.