Everything about Leda And The Swan totally explained
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 large-scale sculpture of antiquity, although
Timotheos is known to have represented Leda in sculpture (
compare illustration, below left); small-scale examples survive showing both reclining and standing poses, in
cameos and engraved gems, rings, and terracotta oil lamps. Thanks to the literary renditions of
Ovid and
Fulgentius 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.
Eroticism
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. 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 doesn't imply a rape), though
Lorenzo de' Medici had both a Roman sarcophagus and an antique carved gem of the subject, both with reclining Ledas.
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. An engraving dating to 1503 at the latest, by
Giovanni Battista Palumba, also shows the couple in coitus, but in deserted countryside. 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. 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.
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's known from many copies.
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. 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 engraving by
Cornelis de 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. 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.
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 wasn't 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.
There were many other depictions in the Renaissance, including cycles of book illustations to Ovid, but most were derivative of the compositions mentioned above. The subject remained largely confined to Italy, and sometimes France – Northern versions are rare. After something of a hiatus in the 18th and early 19th centuries (apart from a very sensuous
Boucher, Leda and the Swan became again a popular motif in the later 19th and 20th centuries, with many
Symbolist and
Expressionist treatments.
In Modern 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.
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.
Photographer
Charlie White included a portrait of Leda in his "And Jeapordize the Integrity of the Hull" series. Zeus, as the swan, only appears metaphorically.
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.
"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.
» 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
» 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?
Further Information
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