Da Vinci's huge 'horse-that-never-was' proven feasible

Washington, Mar 5 (ANI): Leonardo Da Vinci's plan to build the largest horse statue was perfectly feasible, according to experts.

Virtual simulations has proven that Da Vinci's calculations were totally on mark in his plan to build the masterpiece that never became a reality.

Fluid dynamics software has shown that the 24-foot-high horse would have been cast in a single pouring and the amount of bronze needed to cast the horse was 70 tons-exactly as Leonardo had calculated.

A new multidisciplinary research has revealed that "Il Cavallo," the huge equine statue Da Vinci never got to make, wasn't plagued by technical problems as was widely believed.

On the other hand, Da Vinci's plan for the largest equestrian statue in the world was a perfectly feasible project, which, if completed, would have probably been his greatest legacy, more than "The Last Supper" or any other work.

Commissioned in 1482 by Lodovico Sforza, duke of Milan, in honor of his father Francesco, the massive bronze horse took Leonardo 17 years of research, but was never completed.

However, when the full-scale clay model was finally ready to be cast in a single operation in 1499, all the needed bronze was used to make cannons for an imminent war against the King of France.

The moulds were lost and the invading French soldiers reduced the clay model to rubble.

While the Italian genius never stopped mourning the "horse-that-never-was," engineers have always believed that the daring plan to make the largest single-pouring cast ever would have failed because of technical problems.

"How would you handle such a large quantity of hot bronze, and how would balance a huge structure weighing many tons on three legs? Advanced computing and precise data stored in Leonardo's manuscripts have now provided the answers," Discovery News quoted Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, Italy, as saying.

But now, after Galluzzi's team combined Leonardo's notes and computational fluid dynamics software, it was shown that the 24-foot-high, 70-ton bronze horse would have been successfully cast in a single pouring in just 165 seconds.

"The project was totally feasible in the two different versions that Da Vinci had conceived, with the horse cast either in horizontal or vertical position. However, he had to abandon the leg up position since a 20-meter-deep casting pit would have not been safe," said Galluzzi. (ANI)