This Bronze Sculpture Touted as a Da Vinci Was Supposed to Fetch $50 Million at Auction. Instead, It Flopped With Zero Bids

A hotly debated cast of an
equestrian sculpture that some believe is linked to Leonardo da
Vinci was estimated to sell for between $30 million and $50 million
at auction last night. Instead, it flopped. 

The object—which was offered
without a reserve, or minimum price—was the star lot at a sparsely
attended Guernsey’s sale
hosted at New York’s Pierre Hotel. Bidding started at $10 million before the
auctioneer came down to $8 million. But no offers came in. The
piece remains available for sale privately. 

The sculpture, titled
Horse and
Rider, is a contemporary
bronze cast of a beeswax model that some believe to have been
carved by Leonardo around 1510. It’s said to depict Charles
d’Amboise, the French
Governor of Milan from 1503 to 1511 and a prominent patron of the Renaissance master.
The original, proponents claim, would have been used as a model for
a larger, unrealized monument. But whether or not that 10-inch
statue was actually done by Leonardo has long been the subject of
debate. 

“In my opinion, this wax model
is by Leonardo himself,” wrote Dr. Carlo Pedretti, a noted
Renaissance scholar who has authored numerous books on the artist,
in a 1985 letter of authentication. 

Others don’t share Pedretti’s
certainty. 

“It seems to me not credible as
a Leonardo sculpture,” Martin Kemp, a Leonardo expert and art
historian at Oxford University, told
Bloomberg. The object
“has none of the characteristics of understanding horse anatomy and
Renaissance armor that you would expect from Leonardo.”

Another scholar was even more
direct. “Sometimes a work is so ridiculous and impossible that a
scholar like me feels authorized to speak,” said Francesco
Caglioti, a professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in
Italy. “This thing has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with
Leonardo. I can’t imagine it was done before the late 19th century.
It looks like a revivalistic work by the hand of somebody who tried
to imagine a Renaissance horse and rider.”

After centuries circulating
through private collections in Europe, a London-based antique
dealer purchased the work in 1985. Noting the damage it had
sustained and the instability of its material, he had a latex mold
made of the object. 

Two years later, the mold was
purchased by collector Richard A. Lewis, who, in 2012, used it to
make the bronze facsimile offered up last night at Guernsey’s.
Lewis also made 70 additional bronze casts in four different
patinas, which he sold for between $25,000 and $35,000 in
successive years.

The $30 million to $50 million
Guernsey’s estimate—lofty by any stretch, considering the work was
a contemporary cast of an object that might be by Leonardo—was set by Brett Maly, a Las
Vegas-based appraiser known for frequent appearances on History
Channel show “Pawn Stars.”

The post This Bronze Sculpture Touted as a Da Vinci Was
Supposed to Fetch $50 Million at Auction. Instead, It Flopped With
Zero Bids appeared first on artnet News.