In the late 1480s Ludovico Sforza, the ruler of Milan, commissioned Leonardo to execute a colossal equestrian monument to his father Francesco Sforza. The horse alone would have stood perhaps 7 metres (23') high, and the difficulties of casting such a huge bronze occupied Leonardo from the outset. This sheet includes designs for the method of casting, with the horse shown schematically as a cylinder in a pit, upside down with two straight legs pointing upwards. The largest drawings study the system of gears and pulleys to haul the mould out of the ground after casting. But the cast was never made. In 1494 the French army swept through Italy, and the bronze intended for the horse was requisitioned to make cannon. And when the French took Milan in a second campaign in 1499, Leonardo's huge clay model was used for target practice by the invading archers, and destroyed.