What robotic figure did Leonardo da Vinci design for a 1495 court entertainment in Milan?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a mechanical knight for a court entertainment in Milan around 1495.

The machine was commissioned in the context of celebrations for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. Leonardo’s drawings show an armored figure operated by a system of pulleys, cables, and gears. The mechanism may have allowed the figure to sit, stand, move its arms, and raise its visor, although the exact original performance is not documented in complete detail.

The robot was not an electronic robot in the modern sense. It was an automaton: a machine whose movements were produced mechanically. The design was reconstructed in the early twenty-first century by engineers and historians using Leonardo’s surviving studies. That reconstruction demonstrated that the basic mechanism could work, while also showing how much interpretation is needed when reconstructing incomplete Renaissance drawings.