The original Renaissance man, known the world over for his enigmatic paintings, inspired inventions, intense curiosity and zest for shaping the stuff of the world into art by whatever means available, Leonardo da Vinci remains an inspiration for artists and great minds nearly 500 years after his death.

Chances are you’ve seen da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and The Last Supper dozens of times in your life. You’ve marveled at his many-limbed Vitruvian Man and wondered about how an artist living in the 15th and 16th centuries had the ingenuity to design forerunners to modern calculators, helicopters and tanks. But it’s da Vinci’s less well-known work with sculpture that has historians and art collectors talking today. Authenticated by University of California, Los Angeles Armand Hammer Director of Leonardo Studies Carlo Pedretti­—an expert with 50 books and more than 700 scholarly articles and essays on da Vinci to his name—the 1985 discovery of a wax model inherited by da Vinci’s pupil, Francesco Melzi, has become the only known work of sculpture to survive the many years since da Vinci’s heyday. The sculpture, called simply Horse and Rider, made from this wax model is now exclusively available for collectors in highly limited editions of bronze, verde, silver and classic Leonardo patinas and showcased at The Shoppes at The Palazzo’s Renaissance Galleries. Fluid and soft, yet undeniably powerful, the 12-inch-long, 12-inch-high and seven-inch-wide Horse and Rider speaks of da Vinci’s ability to convey the subtle complexities of form and emotion through art—complexities only now fully realized in three dimensions.

We spoke with Richard Lewis, a retired engineer and da Vinci enthusiast who owns the mold created from the wax model of Horse and Rider.

“Whenever I hold this piece in my hand, shivers go up and down my back,” he laughs. “At the time I [purchased it], which was in 1988, in all honesty, I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I made the acquisition, and it kind of languished on my shelf for 25 years. Now, in my retirement years I’ve become very excited about presenting it to the world.”

The original wax model, more than 500 years old, had been damaged over the years—including a missing leg on both the horse and the rider—when it was first discovered in Switzerland by traveling businessmen. Lewis, a friend of one of the businessmen, purchased the mold.

The wax model, according to Professor Pedretti, was most likely created in honor of da Vinci’s friend and patron, Charles d’Amboise, French governor of Milan during the reign of Louis XII.

“There’s a portrait of Charles d’Amboise in the Louvre [by Andrea Solario],” Lewis explains. “[And] it is remarkable how the rider’s face and the face in the portrait are similar if not identical people.”

A find like this in the art world doesn’t come along often, and it can only be seen in Las Vegas.

“This is a magnificent piece of art,” Lewis concludes. “People will be ecstatic to own such a magnificent piece of art that was derived from Leonardo Da Vinci himself. I expect it to have a tremendous, positive effect on the art world.”

Leonardo da Vinci’s Horse and Rider | Renaissance Galleries, The Shoppes at The Palazzo | 702-732-3638