"The French admired Leonardo as well," he said. He worked for 12 years on the project, and created a clay model of the horse, which was displayed in 1493, but was shot to bits when the French army invaded the city.Ĭharney believes that fragments of the model could still be out there. Leonardo was to create a five meter-high bronze statue of a horse in honor of Milan's ruling family, the Sforzas. It was to be the biggest bronze sculpture ever made in a single casting. Kemp said that the survival rate of such an object is likely to be low, though similar painted shields from the period have survived.īut, he said: "It's not the sort of thing that would have been treasured from moment one as a great masterpiece." "The Medusa Shield was meant to be one of these origin stories from Leonardo's youth, so it could be in Vinci (in Tuscany, where Leonardo was born), or it could be in Florence but these things tend to move around, especially if people didn't know it was a Leonardo, it might have entered a collection under a different name," he continued. "If that shield exists, it would be a great trophy," Charney said. The shield was later referenced in a painting by Caravaggio. Vasari describes a young Leonardo painting onto a wooden shield the face of classical monster Medusa. Noah Charney, art crimes expert, on Leonardo's "Medusa Shield"Ĭharney and Kemp agree that the story of Leonardo's "Medusa Shield," which is detailed in art historian Giorgio Vasari's 1550 tome "Lives of the most eminent painters, sculptors and architects," may well be apocryphal. If that shield exists, it would be a great trophy The number of Leonardo da Vinci's paintings is small, "no more than 20," according to Martin Kemp, Emeritus Research Professor in the History of Art at Oxford University and a leading expert on Leonardo da Vinci.īut the re-discovery, this year, of a Leonardo painting named "Salvator Mundi" gives art lovers everywhere hope, said art crimes expert Noah Charney, author of "The Theft of the Mona Lisa" and founder of think tank, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.ĬNN takes a look at the famous lost works of Leonardo, and how likely it is they will ever be found again. While the world's most famous painting was thankfully retrieved, there remains a handful of missing works by the great master whose whereabouts are still the subject of feverish speculation. London (CNN) - It is 100 years since Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris by an Italian handyman and secreted away for two years before eventually coming to light again.
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