Following a 1995 exhibit in Stockholm, Sweden, the media was ablaze with the announcement that a small, centuries-old beeswax figure of a man on horseback was authenticated by leading scholars as having been the work of none other than the great Renaissance master, Leonardo da Vinci. Years later, a single bronze figure was able to be meticulously cast from the ancient wax. Believed to be the model for what was to have been a monument honoring Leonardo’s patron Charles d’Amboise, the bronze casting was titled simply Horse and Rider. It is stunning. It is historic. And it is coming to auction.

So rare is it that a work by Leonardo becomes available that in 2017, a painting attributed to him brought $450 million at auction, the highest amount ever paid for a single work of art.

Emerging from a Swiss vault in the 1980s, the wax Horse and Rider became the object of intense study by Italy's Dr. Carlo Pedretti (then, UCLA’s Armand Hammer Chair in Leonardo Studies). Widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading Leonardo scholars and author of more than sixty volumes on da Vinci, Pedretti not only authenticated the sculpture but included it prominently in his three-volume masterwork of original Leonardo art in the British collection of Her Majesty The Queen. Professor Ernesto Solari, a noted Leonardo da Vinci academic, thought so much of Horse and Rider that his 2016 book is entirely devoted to it.

Later this year, that unique 28 cm bronze, the only casting to emerge directly from Leonardo’s c. 1510 beeswax figure - along with the original mold made from the wax figure, will be sold by Guernsey’s in a Fall 2019 auction.

From a block of beeswax, Leonardo da Vinci created a beeswax statue of a horse and rider in full militaria regalia, likely a depiction of Charles d’Amboise, the French governor of Milan and a patron and friend of Leonardo’s in the illustrious figure's second Milanese period.

1519 - 1920

The artwork remained in the collection of Francesco Melzi, an apprentice of Leonardo, at his Vaprio d’Appa Villa from Leonardo’s death in 1519 to the early twentieth century when the statuette was sold to an unknown collector and removed from Italy.

1982 -1995

In 1982, David Nickerson (then, director of Mallett at Bourdon House in London) took possession of the wax model and preserved the integrity of the original by way of having a mold made. At that point, Nickerson’s associate Paul Wegner met with a preeminent Leonardo da Vinci scholar, Carlo Pedretti who released a letter of authenticity on the Institute letterhead. Pedretti along with other leading Leonardo scholars studied the mold and performed comprehensive research into the mold and wax. .

1995

The wax model was exhibited for the first and only time in Stockholm, Sweden in an event coordinated by renowned Leonardo scholars.

2012

A wax model was made from the mold of Leonardo’s original and, using the lost-wax method, the original bronze statue of Horse and Rider was cast. Archival documentation on the wax model, as supplied by Professor Pedretti, who has done pioneering work in reassembling Leonardo’s papers, was used to ensure the bronze retained the quality and character of the original.