Visitors to the High now have the opportunity to name Leonardo da Vinci’s Sforza Horse, which is currently re-created on the High’s Sifly Piazza, for the chance to win airline tickets, a dinner for four, $100 to spend in the High’s Museum Shop, and a class trip to the High. To enter (no purchase necessary), visitors will fill out forms at kiosks in the museum’s lobby with their proposed name for the horse, the reason they chose that name, and their contact information. The contest will be judged by museum staff and a winner will be selected by March 1, 2010. 

The contest is being held in celebration of the exhibition, “Leonardo da Vinci: Hand of the Genius.” On view through February 21, 2010, the exhibition explores Leonardo’s profound interest in and influence on sculpture, featuring approximately 50 works, including more than 20 sketches and studies by Leonardo, some of which will be on view in the United States for the first time. The exhibition also features work by Donatello, Rubens, Verrocchio, and Rustici—including Rustici’s three monumental bronzes from the façade of the Baptistery in Florence that comprise “John the Baptist Preaching to a Levite and a Pharisee,” which was recently restored and has never left Florence. 

Also included are works from world-renowned collections, including that of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the Musée du Louvre, the British Museum , and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence . The exhibition sheds new light on Leonardo’s seminal role in the development of Renaissance sculpture and the work of artists who followed him through an examination of the sculpture that Leonardo studied, the sketches and studies he created for his own sculptural projects (the majority of which were never realized), and his interactions with other Renaissance sculptors.


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