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The mechanical lion which will prowl again at the Château du Clos Lucé this summer

This king of the jungle was created to flatter a king of France. Now Leonardo da Vinci's amazing feat of engineering has been given new life by an Italian designer.

The monster in question is a friendly-looking, curly-maned, almost life-sized, mechanical lion, which can walk, and move its head and shake its tail and open its jaws. The original was designed in 1517 by a 16th-century special effects man, who later achieved fame as a painter (but was also musician, philosopher, engineer, architect, scientist, mathematician, anatomist, inventor, architect and botanist).

Leonardo da Vinci left only a rudimentary sketch of his robot lion but it has been reconstructed in full-size for the first time by a French-based, Venetian-born designer of automatons, Renato Boaretto. Using contemporary accounts and the other mechanical sketches left by the great artist, the 66-year-old has built a spectacular clockwork toy over 6ft long and four feet high, which can walk and wag its tail and simulate roaring movements of its head.

Leo's lion was created to demonstrate an old man's prowess and to flatter and amuse a French king. Even in the technology-sated early 21st century, it is impressive. In the early 16th century, it was the highest of hi-tech, up to 300 years ahead of its time.

The Da Vinci cat prowls again this summer – and until 31 January next year – as part of an exhibition on the many links between Leonardo and France. The exhibition is at the beautiful Château du Clos Lucé, in Amboise, beside the River Loire, where Da Vinci passed the last three years of his life and died in 1519.

The automaton-maker Boaretto has studied other Leonardo manuscripts, including the artist's many advanced studies of how to improve the mechanism of clocks. "My big problem was to try to get inside Leonardo's mind and to try think as he might have thought, based on the technology which existed or that he envisaged in his sketches for other machines," M. Boaretto said.

"Leonardo's big problem was to give such a heavy machine – 50 or 60 kilos – enough power in one motor in a limited space to walk forward and to move its head and tail."

The technology which M. Boaretto concluded that Leonardo used to solve this conundrum involved a complex meshing of gears, pulleys, chains, wheels, pendulums and axles. The pendulum technology looked forward to the early 17th century and the axle – which makes the lion's legs move – presages methods not fully developed until the late 18th and 19th centuries.

The reborn lion is wound up by a large crank, or key, in a chamber on its right side. The Clos Lucé handyman, Fabrice Madier, is called away from his work in the grounds to turn this handle whenever visitors request to see the lion walk. Once fully wound, the animal shuffles forward for up to ten paces, twirls its tail, rotates its head and displays its fangs: a spectacle fit for a king.

(From an article in the Independent)