aspirant to the throne was exiled to Pisa, and only returned to
Milan in 1479 when he was Lord (Governatore) of the State of Milan,
in 1480 after the minister Cecco Simonetta had been murdered. It may
have been soon after this that Ludovico il Moro announced a
competition for an equestrian statue, and it is tolerably certain
that Antonio del Pollajuolo took part in it, from this passage in
Vasari's Life of this artist: "E si trovo, dopo la morte sua, il
disegno e modello che a Lodovico Sforza egli aveva fatto per la
statua a cavallo di Francesco Sforza, duca di Milano; il quale
disegno e nel nostro Libro, in due modi: in uno egli ha sotto
Verona; nell'altro, egli tutto armato, e sopra un basamento pieno di
battaglie, fa saltare il cavallo addosso a un armato; ma la cagione
perche non mettesse questi disegni in opera, non ho gia potuto
sapere." One of Pollajuolo's drawings, as here described, has lately
been discovered by Senatore Giovanni Morelli in the Munich
Pinacothek. Here the profile of the horseman is a portrait of
Francesco Duke of Milan, and under the horse, who is galloping to
the left, we see a warrior thrown and lying on the ground; precisely
the same idea as we find in some of Leonardo's designs for the
monument, as on Pl. LXVI, LXVII, LXVIII, LXIX and LXXII No. 1; and,
as it is impossible to explain this remarkable coincidence by
supposing that either artist borrowed it from the other, we can only
conclude that in the terms of the competition the subject proposed
was the Duke on a horse in full gallop, with a fallen foe under its
hoofs.

Leonardo may have been in the competition there and then, but the
means for executing the monument do not seem to have been at once
forthcoming. It was not perhaps until some years later that Leonardo
in a letter to the Duke (No. 719) reminded him of the project for