國立故宮博物院 National Palace Museum
Leonardo the Sculptor
Leonardo is often praised as a… 更多 sculptor, yet to this day no work exists that we could say was executed by him with certainty. The artist was as famous for The Last Supper in Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan as he was for his sculpture of The Sforza Horse, which is now lost. While excellent sketches exist of equestrian monuments drawn by him, the master cannot even safely be credited with The Budapest Horse.
It is likely that - as it was later the case with his nephew Pierino da Vinci - Leonardo first began his career at a very young age in the artistic ceramics workshop of his family. On the side of his paternal grandmother, his ancestors had been running this workshop in the town of Bacchereto (near Vinci), while his stepfather was a “kilnman” in a workshop that later passed into the hands of his father Ser Piero da Vinci and of Francesco, Leonardo’s favorite uncle.
The artist himself wrote that he had engaged “in sculpture no less than in painting, practicing both arts to the same degree” (Treatise on Painting, § 34).