And all this time that he was working at physics and mathematics, he
was painting and modeling in clay, just for recreation.

Then behold the Duke of Milan, the ascetic and profligate, libertine
and dreamer, hearing of him and sending straightway for Leonardo
because he is "the most accomplished harpist in Italy"!

So Leonardo came and led the dance and the tourney, improvised songs
and planned the fetes and festivals where strange animals turned
into birds and gigantic flowers opened, disclosing beautiful girls.

Yet Leonardo found time to plan the equestrian statue of Francisco
Sporza, the Duke's father, and finding the subject so interesting he
took up the systematic study of the horse, and dived to the depths
of horse anatomy in a way that no living man had done before. He
dissected the horse, articulated the skeletons of different breeds
for comparison, and then wrote a book upon the subject which is a
textbook yet; and meanwhile he let the statue wait. He discovered
that in the horse there are rudimentary muscles, and unused organs--
the "water-stomach" for instance--thus showing that the horse
evolved from a lower form of life--anticipating Darwin by three
hundred years.

The Duke was interested in statues and pictures--what he called
"results"--he didn't care for speculations or theories, and only a
live horse that could run fast interested him. So to keep the peace,
the gracious Leonardo painted portraits of the Duke's mistress,
posing her as the Blessed Virgin, thus winning the royal favor and
getting carte-blanche orders on the Keeper of the Exchequer. As a