was never modelled due to a confederation of Swiss, Spanish, and Venetian forces driving the French from Milan. Influence and modern versions In 1640, Pietro Tacca built the first equestrian monument featuring a (freestanding) rearing horse and King Philip IV of Spain, for which Galileo Galilei helped compute gravitational solutions—similar to Leonardo's—to deal with its offset weight. Étienne Maurice Falconet's Bronze Horseman accomplishes a similar feat, although neither reach the physical scale of Leonardo's design. About five centuries after the original project failed, Leonardo's surviving design materials were used as the basis for sculptures intended to bring the project to fruition. The Horse Charles C. Dent, an amateur artist and flying enthusiast since his youth, strove to become a pioneering United Airlines pilot by profession as well as a dedicated art collector. In 1977, he read in the September issue of National Geographic its feature article on the history of Leonardo's horse and statue. Dent then began a project to re-create the unfinished sculpture in his home town, Allentown, Pennsylvania, and founded the nonprofit organization Leonardo da Vinci's Horse, Inc. (LDVHI) to support the project. His efforts to grow the organization to finance the project proved a difficult task that required more than 15 years. Dent's projected cost for the horse came to nearly US$2.5 million. He had a domed studio/workshop constructed in Allentown within which he personally began to conceptualize the re-creation and initial modelling of the sculpture. In 1988, he enlisted sculptor/painter Garth Herrick to begin part-time work on the horse. When Charles Dent died of Lou Gehrig's disease on December 25, 1994 he left his private art collection to LDVHI, the sale of which brought more than $1 million to the fund. The LDVHI Board acted on its promise to Dent to complete Dent’s vision. By 1997, Tallix Art Foundry, in Beacon, New York, the company contracted by LDVHI to cast the horse, had suggested bringing Nina Akamu, an experienced animal sculptor, on board to improve upon the Dent-Herrick horse. After several months. Nina Akamu determined that the original model could not be salvaged and concluded that a completely new sculpture needed to be executed. Leonardo had made numerous small sketches of horses to help illustrate his notes about the complex procedures for molding and casting the sculpture. But his notes were far from systematic, and none of the sketches points to the final position of the