Leda and the Swan

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Leda and the Swan

copy after a lost original by Michelangelo, after 1530

Oil on canvas

105.4 × 141 cm

National Gallery, London

Leda and the Swan is a motif from Greek mythology, in which Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan. According to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta. As the story goes, Zeus took the form of a swan and raped or seduced Leda on the same night she slept with her husband, King Tyndareus. In some versions, she laid two eggs from which the children hatched. In other versions, Helen is a daughter of Nemesis, the goddess who personified the disaster that awaited those suffering from the pride of Hubris.

The motif was rarely seen in the art of antiquity, although Timotheos is known to have represented Leda in sculpture and small-scale examples survive showing both reclining and standing poses,^[1] but emerged as a classicizing theme, with erotic overtones, in the Italian Renaissance.

Contents 1 Eroticism 2 In painting 3 In Contemporary Art 4 In poetry 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Eroticism

The subject undoubtedly owed its popularity to the paradox that it was considered more acceptable to depict a woman in the act of copulation with a swan than with a man. The earliest depictions show the pair love-making with some explicitness - more so than in any depictions of a human pair made by artists of high quality in the same period.^[2] The fate of the album I Modi some years later shows why this was. The theme remained a dangerous one in the Renaissance, as the fates of the three best known paintings on the subject demonstrate. The earliest depictions were all in the more private medium of the old master print, and mostly from Venice. They were often based on the extremely brief account in the Metamorphoses of Ovid (who does not imply a rape), though Lorenzo de' Medici had both a Roman sarcophagus and an antique carved gem of the subject, both with reclining Ledas. ^[3]

The earliest known explicit Renaissance depiction is one of the many beautiful woodcut illustations to Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a book published in Venice in 1499. This shows Leda and the Swan making love with gusto, despite being on top of a triumphal car, being pulled along and surrounded by a considerable crowd.[1] An engraving dating to 1503 at the latest, by Giovanni Battista Palumba, also shows the couple in coitus, but in a deserted countryside. Another engraving, certainly from Venice and attributed by many to Giulio Campagnola, shows a love-making scene, but here Leda's attitude is highly ambiguous.[2]^[4] Palumba made another engraving in about 1512, presumably influenced by Leonardo's sketches for his earlier composition, showing Leda seated on the ground and playing with her children.[3]

[edit] In painting

Leonardo da Vinci began making studies in 1504 for a painting, apparently never executed, of Leda seated on the ground with her children. In 1508 he painted a different composition of the subject, with a nude standing Leda cuddling the Swan, with the two sets of infant twins, and their huge broken egg-shells. The original of this is lost, probably deliberately destroyed, but it is known from many copies. Also lost, and probably deliberately destroyed, is Michelangelo's oil painting of the pair making love. This too is known from many copies, including an engraving by Cornelis de Bos, c. 1563; the marble sculpture by Bartolomeo Ammanati in the Bargello, Florence; and the painting after Michelangelo, c. 1530, in the National Gallery, London. The Michelangelo composition, of about 1530, is a definitive example of Mannerism.

The last very famous Renaissance painting of the subject is Correggio's elaborate composition of c. 1530 (Berlin); this too was damaged whilst in the collection of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, the Regent of France in the minority of Louis XV. Though both extremely dissolute and a great lover of painting, he had periodic crises of conscience about his way of life, in one of which he attacked the figure of Leda with a knife. The damage has been repaired, though full restoration to the original condition was not possible. Both the Leonardo and Michelangelo paintings also disappeared when in the collection of the French Royal Family, and are believed to have been destroyed by more moralistic widows or successors of their owners.^[5]

There were many other depictions in the Renaissance, including cycles of book illustations to Ovid, but most were derivative of the compositions mentioned above.[4] The subject remained largely confined to Italy, and sometimes France - Northern versions are rare. ^[6] After something of a a hiatus in the 18th and early 19th centuries (apart from a very ripe Boucher [5]), Leda and the Swan became again a popular motif in the later 19th and 20th centuries, with many Symbolist and Expressionist treatments.

[edit] In Contemporary Art

Cy Twombly executed an intense version of Leda and the Swan in 1962. It is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.[6]

Avant-garde filmmaker Kurt Kren along with other members of the Vienna Actionist movement including Otto Muehl and Hermann Nitsch made a film-performance version of Leda and the Swan called 7/64 Leda mit der Schwan in 1964. The film retains the classical motif, portraying, for most of its duration, a young woman embracing a swan.

[edit] In poetry

Ronsard wrote a poem on La Défloration de Lède, perhaps inspired by the Michelangelo, which he may well have known. Like many artists, he imagines the beak penetrating Leda's mouth. ^[7] "Leda And The Swan" is a poem by William Butler Yeats first published in 1928 (below). Combining psychological realism with a mystic vision, it describes the swan's rape of Leda.

Study for the head of Leda

Leonardo, c. 1506

Pen and ink over black chalk

29.8 × 29 cm

Royal Library, Windsor

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush,

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower^[8]

And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Bull p. 167. See External links for examples
2. ^ Bull p 167
3. ^ Bull p167
4. ^ Not a woodcut, as Bull (p169) wrongly says (see Hind BM catalogue,The Illustrated Bartsch etc); nor is his view of Leda's expression the only one.
5. ^ Bull p169
6. ^ Bull p.170
7. ^ Bull p.169
8. ^ "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships/ And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" (Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus). Both Helen and Clytemnestra were Leda's daughters.

[edit] References

• Malcolm Bull, The Mirror of the Gods, How Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Pagan Gods, Oxford UP, 2005, ISBN 100195219236

[edit] External links

• Ovid Illustrated - large site from the University of Virginia, where many depictions of Leda and the Swan from Renaissance and later editions of the Metamorphoses will (eventually) be found.
• Yeats' "Leda and the Swan": an image's coming of age
• Greek vase from the Getty
• Alternative detail view of the Getty vase
• Roman statue from the Getty
• Baroque bronze from the Getty
• English snuff box c.1720
• Sculpture c 1900