In 1499, invading French forces under the mercenary commander Gian Giacomo Trivulzio had destroyed the clay model for Leonardo’s Sforza monument. A decade later, with deep irony, Trivulzio commissioned his own funerary equestrian monument from Leonardo. This was to consist of a bronze horse and rider, on a marble architectural framework housing Trivulzio’s sarcophagus, flanked by sculptures of tethered captives.