Module 11

Module 11

Leonardo's Horse

Summary
Leonardo Da Vinci was commissioned to build a large bronze horse but never got to do it because his original model got destroyed.  He was supposed to craft it for the duke of Milan and it was one of his disappointments that he never got to complete the job.  500 years later, an American pilot took up this dream and brought it to reality.  It took a lot of time and money but Leonard's horse was finished. 

Citation
Fritz, Jean. (2001).  Leonardo's Horse.  New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Impressions
I knew nothing of this story but it is a very interesting one.  To resurrect a dream of Leonardo's after all that time is amazing and on such a big scale is even more cool.  I liked this in the picture book form because I think it is a story that can be for any age.  Quite a few words for a picture type book but it is definately a kids book.  The art is good, visually compliments the story and the writing is simple but effective.  I also thought it did a good job of advertising the foundation. Good story and a true one at that. 

Review
Long, Joanna Rudge (2001). Horn Book Magazine.   Vol. 77(5). p. 609.
In 1482, Leonardo da Vinci began work on a mammoth bronze horse. But though he completed a twenty-four-foot clay model, it was never cast, and the invading French destroyed it in 1499. Meanwhile, the artist's patron, the Duke of Milan, commandeered the bronze for armaments. Half a millennium later, retired pilot Charles Dent dedicated himself to re-creating Leonardo's dream, a venture eventually realized with the help of sculptor Nina Akamu. Fritz relates all this in her signature forthright style; unfortunately, her narrative, while engaging, begs several questions-notably, how much of Leonardo's original conception survived and how this twentieth-century homage was extrapolated from it. (The book does list a website that states that the completed sculpture is "faithful to Leonardo da Vinci's drawings," but there are otherwise no notes.) Nor does Fritz ever mention the original statue's role as a symbol of political power, or Leonardo's fascination with an engineering problem-casting such a massive figure-that may have been insoluble with technology available to him. Talbott's handsome illustrations are beautifully set off by the book's die-cut shape, which echoes both the dome that dominated fifteenth-century Florence and the one Dent constructed to house his project. But the art is no more forthcoming than the text. Talbott segues between Leonardo's sketches and his own impressionistic watercolors without a word of explanation. What is the reader to make of Talbott's Last Supper, in grisaille save for Leonardo himself, sitting in for Jesus as he tosses about his rejected sketches of Judas? Why is there no photograph of the finished horse? "At last Leonardo's horse was home," Fritz concludes. But what exactly makes it Leonardo's? That question is never addressed here.

Uses
Give the students a certain number or random items and tell them to create whatever they can with it.  Present and then vote on best ones.  Prizes to the best.  This could be tied in with Leonardo the inventor.