Leda and the Swan is a story and subject in art from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, seduces the mortal woman Leda. According to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus, while at the same time bearing Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta. In the W. B. Yeats version, it is subtly suggested that Clytemnestra, although being the daughter of Tyndareus, has somehow been traumatized by what the swan has done to her mother (see below). According to many versions of the story, Zeus took the form of a swan and 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.[1] 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 subject was rarely seen in the large-scale sculpture of antiquity, although a representation of Leda in sculpture has been attributed in modern times to Timotheus (compare illustration, below left); small-scale sculptures survive showing both reclining and standing poses,[2] in cameos and engraved gems, rings, and terracotta oil lamps. Recently, an ancient fresco depicting Leda and the Swan was found at the Pompeii archeological site in Italy.[3] Thanks to the literary renditions of Ovid and Fulgentius[4] it was a well-known myth through the Middle Ages, but emerged more prominently as a classicizing theme, with erotic overtones, in the Italian Renaissance.
Leda and the Swan, Roman marble possibly reflecting a lost work by Timotheos; restored (Prado)
The subject undoubtedly owed its sixteenth-century 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.[5]
The fate of the erotic album I Modi some years later shows why this was so. 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.[6]
The earliest known explicit Renaissance depiction is one of the many woodcut illustrations 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.[7] An engraving dating to 1503 at the latest, by Giovanni Battista Palumba, also shows the couple in coitus, but in deserted countryside.[8] Another engraving, certainly from Venice and attributed by many to Giulio Campagnola, shows a love-making scene, but there Leda's attitude is highly ambiguous.[9][10] Palumba made another engraving, perhaps in about 1512, presumably influenced by Leonardo's sketches for his earlier composition, showing Leda seated on the ground and playing with her children.[11]
There were also significant depictions in the smaller decorative arts, also private media. Benvenuto Cellini made a medallion, now in Vienna, early in his career, and Antonio Abondio one on the obverse of a medal celebrating a Roman courtesan.[12]
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 (also nude), and their huge broken egg-shells. The original of this is lost, probably deliberately destroyed, and was last recorded in the French royal Château de Fontainebleau in 1625 by Cassiano dal Pozzo. However it is known from many copies, of which the earliest are probably the Spiridon Leda, perhaps by a studio assistant and now in the Uffizi,[13] and the one at Wilton House in England (illustrated).
Also lost, and probably deliberately destroyed, is Michelangelo's tempera painting of the pair making love, commissioned in 1529 by Alfonso d'Este for his palazzo in Ferrara, and taken to France for the royal collection in 1532; it was at Fontainebleau in 1536. Michelangelo's cartoon for the work—given to his assistant Antonio Mini, who used it for several copies for French patrons before his death in 1533—survived for over a century. This composition is known from many copies, including an ambitious engraving by Cornelis Bos, c. 1563; the marble sculpture by Bartolomeo Ammanati in the Bargello, Florence; two copies by the young Rubens on his Italian voyage, and the painting after Michelangelo, ca. 1530, in the National Gallery, London.[14] The Michelangelo composition, of about 1530, shows Mannerist tendencies of elongation and twisted pose (the figura serpentinata) that were popular at the time. In addition, a sculptural group, similar to the Prado Roman group illustrated, was believed until at least the 19th century to be by Michelangelo.[15]
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. His son Louis, though a great lover of painting, 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.[16]
There were many other depictions in the Renaissance, including cycles of book illustrations to Ovid, but most were derivative of the compositions mentioned above.[17] The subject remained largely confined to Italy, and sometimes France – Northern versions are rare.[18] After something of a hiatus in the 18th and early 19th centuries (apart from a very sensuous Boucher,[19]), Leda and the Swan became again a popular motif in the later 19th and 20th centuries, with many Symbolist and Expressionist treatments.
Based on a recent speculation, The Threatened Swan at Rijksmuseum depicts Zeus, trying to protect its nest with two children, relating to this story. The dog in this painting represents angry Tyndareus.
Cy Twombly executed an abstract version of Leda and the Swan in 1962. It was purchased by Larry Gagosian for $52.9 million at Christie's May 2017 Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale.[22]
Avant-garde filmmaker Kurt Kren along with other members of the Viennese Actionist movement, including Otto Muehl and Hermann Nitsch, made a film-performance 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.[citation needed]
Photographer Charlie White included a portrait of Leda in his "And Jeopardize the Integrity of the Hull" series. Zeus, as the swan, only appears metaphorically.[23]
American artist and photographer Carole Harmel created the “Bird” series (1983), a Jean Cocteau-influenced collection of photographs that explored the “Leda and the Swan” myth in tightly cropped, voyeuristic images of a nude female and an undefinable birdlike creature hinting at intimacy.[25][26]
Bristol Museum and Art Gallery currently exhibits Karl Weschke's Leda and the Swan, painted in 1986.
The Winnipeg Art Gallery in Canada has, in its permanent collection, a ceramic "Leda and the Swan" by Japanese-born American artist Akio Takamori.
There is a sculpture in neon lights depicting Leda and the Swan in Berlin, near Sonnenallee metro station and the Estrel hotel, opposite Griessmühle.
Ronsard wrote a poem on La Défloration de Lède, perhaps inspired by the Michelangelo, whom he may well have known. Like many artists, he imagines the beak penetrating Leda's vagina.[27]
"Leda and the Swan" is a sonnet by William Butler Yeats first published in the Dial in 1923. Combining psychological realism with a mystic vision, it describes the swan's rape of Leda. It also alludes to the Trojan war, which will be provoked by the abduction of Helen, who will be begotten by Zeus on Leda (along with Castor and Pollux, in some versions of the myth). Clytaemnestra, who killed her husband, Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks at Troy, was also supposed to have hatched from one of Leda's eggs. The poem is regularly praised as one of Yeats's masterpieces.[28]Camille Paglia said the poem "could justifiably be considered the best of the twentieth century," and that "all human beings, like Leda, are caught up moment by moment in the 'white rush' of experience. For Yeats, the only salvation is the shapeliness and stillness of art."[29] See external links for a bas relief arranged in the position as described by Yeats.
Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío's 1892 poem "Leda" contains an oblique description of the rape, watched over by the god Pan.[30]
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) also wrote a poem called "Leda" in 1919, suggested to be from the perspective of Leda. The description of the sexual action going on makes it seem almost beautiful, as if Leda had given her consent.
Artist: Rick Derringer
Album: Spring Fever
Released: 1975
Genre: Rock
Song: Don’t Ever Say Goodbye
“I need you around
Like Leda needs her Swan
Cause I am only half,
When you're not here, honey.”
In the song "Power and Glory" from Lou Reed's 1992 album Magic and Loss, Reed recalls the experience of seeing his friend dying of cancer and makes reference to the myth, "I saw isotopes introduced into his lungs / trying to stop the cancerous spread / And it made me think of Leda and The Swan / and gold being made from lead"
Sylvia Plath alludes to the myth in her radio playThree Women written for the BBC in 1962. The play features the voices of three women. The first is a married woman who keeps her baby. The second is a secretary who suffers a miscarriage. The third voice, a girl who is pregnant and leaves her baby, mentions "the great swan, with its terrible look,/ Coming at me," insinuating that the girl was raped. The play is about the disconnection of women in society and challenges societal expectations of childbirth.
Several references to the myth are presented in novels by Angela Carter, including Nights at the Circus and The Magic Toyshop. In the latter novel, the myth is brought to life in the form of a performance in which a frightened young girl is forced to act as Leda in accompaniment with a large mechanical swan.
There is a reference to Leda and the Swan and other pieces of lost human knowledge in Michael Talbot's book "The Delicate Dependency" published in 1982.
There is a reference to Leda and the Swan in Dorothea Benton Frank's book "All Summer Long" published in 2016.
A version of the Leda and the Swan story is the foundation myth in the Canadian futuristic thriller television series Orphan Black which aired over 5 seasons from 2013 to 2017. A corporation uses genetic engineering to create a series of female clones (Leda) and a series of male clones (Castor) who are also brothers and sisters clones as they derive from one mother who is a chimera with male and female genomes. The award-winning show addresses issues of the modern science of genetics, corporate greed, the ethics of human cloning, human longevity and the nature of individuality. Actress Tatiana Maslany won an Emmy award for her portrayal of all Leda clones, often together in the same scene. The television show spawned a comic book series which appeared in 2015.
The painting Leda and the Swan (Paul Cézanne, 1880) as well as the sonnet bearing the same title (William Butler Yeats, 1923) are featured in several scenes in the science fiction film Io (Netflix, 2019).
^The idea that the semen of more than one male might influence pregnancy, a feature in the origin myth of Theseus, is called telegony; it retained scientific followers until the late nineteenth century.
^Bull p. 167. See for example a marble relief with the Swan, grasping the back of Leda's neck with his beak, excavated in Argos, Pelopennese, Greece, from 50–100 AD in the British Museum; See External links for other examples
^image; Fossi, Gloria, pp. 402–3, Uffizi: art, history, collections, Giunti Editore Firenze Italy, 2004, ISBN88-09-03676-X, 9788809036765 google books
^Elfriede R. Knauer, "Leda." Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 11 (1969:5–35) illustrates several copies as well as an engraving of a Roman bas-relief and examples of antique engraved gems that seem to have provided Micelangelo's inspiration and gives a full bibliography of Michelangelo's Leda.
^It belonged to John Everett Millais and was included in his 2007 Tate Britain exhibition. Now London, attributed to a 16th-century "follower of Michelangelo".
^Dijkstra, Bram, Idols of Perversity, Oxford University Press, New York, 1986 p.315
^Now in the Barnes Foundation Collection, Merion, Pennsylvania has been dated as early as 1868 and as late as 1886–1890; the best estimate is 1880–1882; Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modern. New York: Knopf, 1993. 106.
In Greek mythology, Callisto or Kallisto was a nymph, or the daughter of King Lycaon; the myth varies in such details. She was one of the followers of Artemis, or Diana for the Romans, who attracted Zeus (Jupiter). He transformed himself into the figure of Artemis and raped her in this disguise. She became pregnant and when this was eventually discovered, she was expelled from Artemis's group, after which a furious Hera transformed her into a bear. Later, just as she was about to be killed by her son when he was hunting, she was set among the stars as Ursa Major. She was the bear-mother of the Arcadians, through her son Arcas by Zeus.
Uffizi
The Uffizi Gallery is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian museums and the most visited, it is also one of the largest and best known in the world and holds a collection of priceless works, particularly from the period of the Italian Renaissance.
Helen of Troy
In Greek mythology, Helen of Troy, also known as Helen of Sparta, was said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was married to Menelaus, who by that marriage became King of Sparta, but was abducted by Prince Paris of Troy after the goddess Aphrodite promised her to him in the Judgement of Paris. This resulted in the Trojan War when the Achaeans set out to reclaim her. She was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and was the sister of Clytemnestra, Castor and Polydeuces, Philonoe, Phoebe and Timandra.
Leda (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Leda was an Aetolian princess who became a Spartan queen. Her myth gave rise to the popular motif in Renaissance and later art of Leda and the Swan.
I Modi
I Modi, also known as The Sixteen Pleasures or under the Latin title De omnibus Veneris Schematibus, is a famous erotic book of the Italian Renaissance in which a series of sexual positions were explicitly depicted in engravings. While the original edition was apparently completely destroyed by the Catholic Church, fragments of a later edition survived. The second edition was accompanied by sonnets written by Pietro Aretino, which described the sexual acts depicted. The original illustrations were probably copied by Agostino Carracci, whose version survives.
Apollo Belvedere
The Apollo Belvedere is a celebrated marble sculpture from Classical Antiquity.
Jupiter and Io
Jupiter and Io is a painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Antonio Allegri da Correggio. It is housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, Austria.
The Feast of the Gods
The Feast of the Gods is an oil painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini, with substantial additions to the landscape in stages by Dosso Dossi and Titian, who added all the landscape to the left and centre. It is one of the few mythological pictures by the Venetian artist. Completed in 1514, it was his last major work. It is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., which calls it "one of the greatest Renaissance paintings in the United States".
Leda and the Swan (Leonardo)
The story of Leda and the Swan was the subject of two compositions by Leonardo da Vinci from perhaps 1503–10. Neither survive as paintings by Leonardo, but there are a number of drawings for both by him, and copies in oils, especially of the second composition, where Leda stands.
Leda Atomica
Leda Atomica is a painting by Salvador Dalí, made in 1949. The picture depicts Leda, the mythological queen of Sparta, with the swan. Leda is a frontal portrait of Dalí's wife, Gala, who is seated on a pedestal with a swan suspended behind and to her left. Different objects such as a book, a set square, two stepping stools and an egg float around the main figure. In the background on both sides, the rocks of Cap Norfeu define the location of the image.
Danaë (Titian series)
Danaë is a series of at least six versions of the same composition by Italian painter Titian and his workshop made between about 1544 and the 1560s. The scene is based on the mythological princess Danaë, as -very briefly- recounted by the Roman poet Ovid, and at greater length by Boccaccio. She was isolated in a bronze tower following a prophecy that her firstborn would eventually kill her father. Although aware of the consequences, Danaë was seduced and became pregnant by Zeus, who, inflamed by lust, descended from Mount Olympus to seduce her in the form of a shower of gold.
Tarquin and Lucretia
Tarquin and Lucretia is an oil painting by Titian completed in 1571, when the artist was in his eighties, for Philip II of Spain. It is signed, and considered to have been finished entirely by Titian himself. It is one of a series of great works from Titian's last years, but unlike some of these, is fully finished. It is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England.
List of rape victims from ancient history and mythology
Rape is a common topic in history and mythology. A list of notable victims from history and mythology includes:
Leda and the Swan (Peter Paul Rubens)
Leda and the Swan, by Peter Paul Rubens, who painted two versions of this subject. The first was completed in 1601 and the second in 1602.
The Abduction of Europa (Rembrandt)
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn's The Abduction of Europa (1632) is one of his rare mythological subject paintings. The work is oil on canvas and now located in the J. Paul Getty Museum. The inspiration for the painting is Ovid's Metamorphoses, part of which tells the tale of Zeus's seduction and capture of Europa. The painting shows a coastal scene with Europa being carried away in rough waters by a bull while her friends remain on shore with expressions of horror. Rembrandt combined his knowledge of classical literature with the interests of the patron in order to create this allegorical work. The use of an ancient myth to impart a contemporary thought and his portrayal of the scene using the High Baroque style are two strong aspects of the work.
Giovanni Battista Palumba
Giovanni Battista Palumba, also known as the Master I.B. with a Bird, was an Italian printmaker active in the early 16th century, making both engravings and woodcuts; he is generally attributed with respectively 14 and 11 of these. He appears to have come from northern Italy, but later worked in Rome. He specialized in subjects from classical mythology, as well as the inevitable religious subjects. Despite his relatively small output, he was a sophisticated artist, whose style shows a number of influences and changes, reflecting awareness of the currents in artistic style at the start of the High Renaissance. The signed prints are usually dated to around 1500–1511.
Leda and the Swan (Michelangelo)
Leda and the Swan is a lost tempera on canvas painting by Michelangelo, produced in 1530 but now only surviving in copies and variants. The work depicted the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan.
Leda with Her Children
Kneeling Leda with Her Children is a 16th-century painting by Leonardo da Vinci's pupil Giampietrino. It is now in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Kassel).
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