[32] Again, the bronze horse may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honour of the prince your father of happy memory, and of the illustrious house of Sforza.
And if any one of the above-named things seem to any one to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment in your park, or in whatever place may please your Excellency—to whom I commend myself with the utmost humility &c.
1341.
To my illustrious Lord, Lodovico, Duke of Bari, Leonardo da Vinci of
Florence— Leonardo.
[Footnote: Evidently a note of the superscription of a letter to the Duke, and written, like the foregoing from left to right. The manuscript containing it is of the year 1493. Lodovico was not proclaimed and styled Duke of Milan till September 1494. The Dukedom of Bari belonged to the Sforza family till 1499.]
1342.
You would like to see a model which will prove useful to you and to me, also it will be of use to those who will be the cause of our usefulness.
[Footnote: 1342. 1343. These two notes occur in the same not very voluminous MS. as the former one and it is possible that they are fragments of the same letter. By the Modello, the equestrian statue is probably meant, particularly as the model of this statue was publicly exhibited in this very year, 1493, on tne occasion of the marriage of the Emperor Maximilian with Bianca Maria Sforza.]
1343.
There are here, my Lord, many gentlemen who will undertake this expense among them, if they are allowed to enjoy the use of admission to the waters, the mills, and the passage of vessels and when it is sold to them the price will be repaid to them by the canal of Martesana.