Metropolitan Museum of Art Marble Relief of the Dioscuri

Theme from Greek mythology

Leda and the Swan is a story and subject in art from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus, in the grade of a swan, seduces or rapes Leda.^[1] According to later Greek mythology, Leda diameter Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus, while at the aforementioned time bearing Brush and Clytemnestra, children of her hubby Tyndareus, the King of Sparta. In the W. B. Yeats version, it is subtly suggested that Clytemnestra, although beingness the daughter of Tyndareus, has somehow been traumatized by what the swan has done to her mother (see below). Co-ordinate to many versions of the story, Zeus took the grade of a swan and raped Leda on the same night she slept with her husband King Tyndareus. In some versions, she laid 2 eggs from which the children hatched.^[2] In other versions, Helen is a girl of Nemesis, the goddess who personified the disaster that awaited those suffering from the pride of Hubris.

The field of study was rarely seen in the large-scale sculpture of antiquity, although a representation of Leda in sculpture has been attributed in mod times to Timotheus (compare illustration, below left); small-scale sculptures survive showing both reclining and continuing poses,^[3] in cameos and engraved gems, rings, and terracotta oil lamps. Thanks to the literary renditions of Ovid and Fulgentius^[4] it was a well-known myth through the Middle Ages, but emerged more prominently equally a classicizing theme, with erotic overtones, in the Italian Renaissance.

Eroticism [edit]

Leda and the Swan, Roman marble peradventure reflecting a lost piece of work by Timotheos; restored (Prado)

The field of study undoubtedly owed its sixteenth-century popularity to the paradox that it was considered more acceptable to draw a woman in the human action of copulation with a swan than with a human. The earliest depictions evidence the pair love-making with some explicitness—more than then than in whatever depictions of a man pair made by artists of high quality in the same menstruation.^[5]

The fate of the erotic anthology I Modi some years later on shows why this was and then. The theme remained a dangerous one in the Renaissance, as the fates of the 3 all-time known paintings on the subject demonstrate. The earliest depictions were all in the more private medium of the one-time chief print, and generally from Venice. They were often based on the extremely brief account in the Metamorphoses of Ovid (who does non imply a rape), though Lorenzo de' Medici had both a Roman sarcophagus and an antique carved jewel of the field of study, both with reclining Ledas.^[6]

The earliest known explicit Renaissance delineation is ane 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 machine, being pulled along and surrounded past a considerable crowd.^[7] An engraving dating to 1503 at the latest, past Giovanni Battista Palumba, too shows the couple in coitus, but in deserted countryside.^[eight] Another engraving, certainly from Venice and attributed by many to Giulio Campagnola, shows a love-making scene, but there Leda'southward mental attitude is highly ambiguous.^{[9] [x]} Palumba fabricated another engraving, mayhap in virtually 1512, presumably influenced by Leonardo's sketches for his earlier composition, showing Leda seated on the footing and playing with her children.^[11]

There were also pregnant depictions in the smaller decorative arts, besides 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]

In painting [edit]

Leonardo da Vinci began making studies in 1504 for a painting, evidently never executed, of Leda seated on the ground with her children. In 1508 he painted a different composition of the subject, with a nude continuing Leda cuddling the Swan, with the ii sets of infant twins (likewise nude), and their huge broken egg-shells. The original of this is lost, probably deliberately destroyed, and was final recorded in the French imperial Château de Fontainebleau in 1625 by Cassiano dal Pozzo. All the same information technology is known from many copies, of which the earliest are probably the Spiridon Leda, perhaps by a studio assistant and at present in the Uffizi,^[13] and the one at Wilton Firm in the United Kingdom (illustrated).

Also lost, and probably deliberately destroyed, is Michelangelo'due south 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 drove in 1532; it was at Fontainebleau in 1536. Michelangelo'due south drawing for the work—given to his assistant Antonio Mini, who used it for several copies for French patrons earlier his decease in 1533—survived for over a century. This limerick 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 immature 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 pop at the time. In addition, a sculptural group, similar to the Prado Roman group illustrated, was believed until at to the lowest degree the 19th century to be by Michelangelo.^[15]

The last very famous Renaissance painting of the subject is Correggio'southward elaborate limerick of c. 1530 (Berlin); this too was damaged whilst in the collection of Philippe 2, Duke of Orléans, the Regent of France in the minority of Louis 15. His son Louis, though a great lover of painting, had periodic crises of censor most his mode of life, in one of which he attacked the effigy of Leda with a pocketknife. The impairment has been repaired, though total 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]

In that location were many other depictions in the Renaissance, including cycles of book illustrations to Ovid, simply most were derivative of the compositions mentioned above.^[17] The subject remained largely bars to Italy, and sometimes France – Northern versions are rare.^[xviii] Later on something of a hiatus in the 18th and early 19th centuries (autonomously from a very sensuous Boucher,^[xix]), Leda and the Swan became again a popular motif in the subsequently 19th and 20th centuries, with many Symbolist and Expressionist treatments.

Also from that era were sculptures of the theme by Antonin Mercié and Max Klinger.^[20]

In modern and contemporary art [edit]

Cy Twombly executed an abstract version of Leda and the Swan in 1962. It was purchased past Larry Gagosian for $52.9 million at Christie'south 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, fabricated a moving-picture show-performance called 7/64 Leda mit der Schwan in 1964. The moving-picture show retains the classical motif, portraying, for most of its duration, a young woman embracing a swan.^{[ commendation needed ]}

There is a life-sized marble statue of Leda and the Swan at the Jai Vilas Palace Museum in Gwalior, Northern Madhya Pradesh, Republic of india.^[23]

American artist and lensman Carole Harmel created the "Bird" serial (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 person and an undefinable birdlike beast hinting at intimacy.^{[24] [25]}

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" past Japanese-built-in American creative person Akio Takamori. Genieve Figgis painted her version of Leda and the Swan in 2018 after an earlier piece of work past François Boucher. Figgis' contemporary version reinvents the idyllic romantic scene of lavish playfulness with a dark humor creating a scene of profanity and horror.^{[26] [27]} In that location is a sculpture in neon lights depicting Leda and the Swan in Berlin, well-nigh Sonnenallee metro station and the Estrel hotel, designed past AES+F. Photographer Charlie White included a portrait of Leda in his "And Jeopardize the Integrity of the Hull" series. Zeus, equally the swan, only appears metaphorically.^{[ citation needed ]}

A statue of an egg placed on Pefnos isle, depicting the wedlock of Swan/Zeus with Leda. The statue was inaugurated on Baronial 22, 2020, from the Professor of Archaeology Petros Themelis and the Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni.

A statue of an egg depicting the marriage of Swan/Zeus with Leda, is placed on the island Pefnos of Agios Dimitrios hamlet, in the region of Messenia on the declension of the southern Peloponnese peninsula in Hellenic republic.^[28]

In verse [edit]

Ronsard wrote a poem on La Défloration de Lède, perhaps inspired past the Michelangelo, which he may well have known. Similar many artists, he imagines the beak penetrating Leda'south vagina.^[29]

"Leda and the Swan" is a sonnet past William Butler Yeats composed in 1923 and first published in the Dial in June, 1924, and after published in the drove 'The Cat the Moon and Certain Poems' in 1924. Combining psychological realism with a mystic vision, it describes the swan'southward rape of Leda. Information technology also alludes to the Trojan war, which will exist provoked by the abduction of Helen, who will exist begotten past 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 take hatched from one of Leda'south eggs. The verse form is regularly praised equally one of Yeats'south masterpieces.^[30] Camille Paglia, who chosen the poem "the greatest poem of the twentieth century," and said "all human beings, like Leda, are caught upward moment past moment in the 'white rush' of experience. For Yeats, the only conservancy is the shapeliness and stillness of fine art."^[31] Encounter external links for a bas relief bundled in the position as described by Yeats.

Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío'south 1892 poem "Leda" contains an oblique description of the rape, watched over by the god Pan.^[32]

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) besides wrote a poem called "Leda" in 1919, suggested to be from the perspective of Leda. The description of the sexual action going on makes information technology seem nigh cute, as if Leda had given her consent.

In the song "Ability and Glory" from Lou Reed'south 1992 anthology 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 remember of Leda and The Swan / and gilded being fabricated from lead"

Sylvia Plath alludes to the myth in her radio play Three Women written for the BBC in 1962. The play features the voices of three women. The first is a married adult female who keeps her babe. The 2nd is a secretary who suffers a miscarriage. The 3rd vocalization, a daughter who is pregnant and leaves her baby, mentions "the groovy 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.

In literature [edit]

Several references to the myth are presented in novels past 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 daughter is forced to act every bit Leda in accompaniment with a big mechanical swan.

There is a reference to Leda and the Swan in Dorothea Benton Frank's 2016 volume All Summertime Long.

The myth is also mentioned in Richard Yates' 1962 novel Revolutionary Road. The grapheme Frank Wheeler, married to April Wheeler, after having had sexual activity with an office secretary ponders what to say as he is leaving: "Did the swan repent to Leda? Did an eagle apologize? Did a lion apologize? Hell no!" ^[33]

There is also a mentioning in The Vocal of Achilles by Madeline Miller. The protagonist has been set up by his begetter to marry Leda's daughter.

In Robert Galbraith'southward 2020 novel, Troubled Blood, one of the main characters Robin Ellacott, visits a painting gallery where she sees a painting of Leda and the swan done by ane character who is an artist in the novel.

In fashion [edit]

In 1935, German-built-in movie star Marlene Dietrich wore a dramatically designed Leda costume to a Hollywood costume political party. Designed by the acclaimed costume designer Travis Banton, a longtime Dietrich collaborator, the white tulle and plumage dress featured a thigh-slit, a mid-length railroad train and, nearly characteristically, a fabric and plume "swan" cervix which coiled effectually Dietrich's own neck, as well a pair of large feathered wings, i stretching downwards across her breast and the other one up across her left shoulder.^[34]

66 years later, at the 2001 Academy Awards, Icelandic singer Bjork wore a dress past Marjan Pejoski in nude mesh and a white tulle brim. The brim gradually narrowed upwardly over the torso to turn into a swan-neck made out of fabric which coiled around the wearer's cervix in exactly the aforementioned way as Dietrich's dress from 1935. Although Dietrich'south costume remains largely unknown to the general public, Bjork's apparel "attained cult condition instantly"^[35] and became an icon of red carpeting culture. All the same, the reference to Marlene Dietrich's costume was rarely (if always) mentioned at the time.

In June 2021, Maria Grazia Chiuri equally creative director for the French fashion house Dior, designed a collection strongly inspired by Hellenistic civilization, the Olympic Games, and Ancient Greek Mythology, and showed it at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens every bit an homage to the Olympic tradition (the drove was shown a month before the commencement of the 2020 Summertime Olympics). The drove's closing pièce de résistance was a Leda-inspired swan dress. The immediate visual similarity between Chiuri'south swan Apparel and Bjork's swan dress sparked excitement on social media every bit nigh people inevitably thought the Dior clothes was directly inspired past Pejoski'southward iconic 2001 creation. However, simply a few days afterward, Dior openly defended the inspiration of the dress referring to it on its Twitter account as a recreation of a costume worn past Marlene Dietrich, who was, famously, an important and loyal client of the French brand during the 40s and 50s.^[36] Notably, Chiuri's 2021 Dior dress featured feathered swan-wings spanning over the chest and shoulder. This dramatic detail, taken directly from Dietrich's costume from 1935, sets Chiuri's dress for Dior entirely autonomously from Bjork's red-carpeting dress, and makes it, irrefutably, a reference to Dietrich's costume, and by extension, to the myth of Leda and the Swan.^{[ citation needed ]}

In modern media [edit]

A version of the Leda and the Swan story is the foundation myth in the Canadian futuristic thriller boob tube 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 person and female genomes.

In commerce [edit]

The Philadelphia cigar maker 'Bobrow Brothers' made a brand of cigars with the name 'Leda' which was sold at least into the 1940s. The cigar label depicted Leda and the Swan in a river.^{[ citation needed ]}

Modern censorship [edit]

In Apr 2012 an art gallery in London, England, was instructed by the constabulary to remove a modern exhibit of Leda and the Swan.^[37] The law concerned was Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Human activity 2008, condemning 'violent pornography', brought in past the Labour Party regime of 2005–2010.^{[ citation needed ]}

Gallery [edit]

• 

  Leda and the Swan, aboriginal fresco from Pompeii

• 

  "The fable of Leda" (Leda and the Swan), Eugenio Cajés (copy of Correggio), Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.

• 

  Leda and Zeus transformed into a swan, Palazzo Nuovo (Capitoline Museums), Rome.

• 

  Leda and the Swan by Fernando Botero, 1996

• 

  Leda and the Swan, by Massimiliano Soldani, 1725

Notes [edit]

1. ^ Medlicott, R. Westward. (1 March 1970). "Leda and the Swan—An Assay of the Theme in Myth and Art". Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. Sage Journals. 4 (1): fifteen–23. doi:x.3109/00048677009159303. PMID 4107336. S2CID 25346766.
2. ^ The idea that the semen of more than one male might influence pregnancy, a feature in the origin myth of Theseus, is chosen telegony; it retained scientific followers until the late nineteenth century.
3. ^ Bull p. 167. Run into for example a marble relief with the Swan, grasping the dorsum of Leda's neck with his beak, excavated in Argos, Peloponnese, Greece, from 50–100 AD in the British Museum; See External links for other examples
4. ^ Fulgentius, Fabuis Planciades (1971). The Fable of the Swan and Leda. Ohio State Academy Press. p. 78. ISBN9780814201626.
5. ^ Bull p 167
6. ^ Bull p167
7. ^ Page 166 – Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
8. ^ Photo of the print
9. ^ Campagnola, Giulio. "Leda and the Swan". Bodkin Prints. Archived from the original on 13 April 2013.
10. ^ Non a woodcut, equally Bull (p169) wrongly says (come across Hind BM catalogue, The Illustrated Bartsch etc); nor is his view of Leda's expression the only one.
11. ^ British Museum copy; The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Special Exhibitions: Poets, Lovers, and Heroes in Italian Mythological Prints
12. ^ Abondio, NGA Washington
13. ^ image; Fossi, Gloria, pp. 402–3, Uffizi: art, history, collections, Giunti Editore Firenze Italian republic, 2004, ISBN 88-09-03676-X, 9788809036765 google books
14. ^ Elfriede R. Knauer, "Leda." Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 11 (1969:5–35) illustrates several copies also as an engraving of a Roman bas-relief and examples of antiquarian engraved gems that seem to have provided Micelangelo's inspiration and gives a full bibliography of Michelangelo's Leda.
15. ^ 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".
16. ^ Bull 169.
17. ^ Bacchiacca (Francesco d'Ubertino): Leda and the Swan | Work of Art | Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
18. ^ Bull 170.
19. ^ Leda and the Swan
20. ^ Dijkstra, Bram, Idols of Perversity, Oxford University Printing, New York, 1986 p.315
21. ^ At present in the Barnes Foundation Collection, Merion, Pennsylvania has been dated equally early as 1868 and as late equally 1886–1890; the best estimate is 1880–1882; Swell French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modernistic. New York: Knopf, 1993. 106.
22. ^ Cy Twombly. "Leda and the Swan".
23. ^ "Jiwaji Rao Scindia Museum – Collection". Archived from the original on 11 February 2015. Retrieved 11 Feb 2015.
24. ^ Pieszak, Devonna. "Carole Harmel", Catalogue essay, Chicago: Galerija, 1983.
25. ^ Os, James. "Art Facts: a mix of media on Wells Street", Chicago Reader, 11 March 1983.
26. ^ Chen, Eleven (5 February 2021). "Being So Caught up: Exploring Religious Projection and Upstanding Entreatment in Leda and the Swan". Religions. MDPI. 12 (2): 107. doi:10.3390/rel12020107.
27. ^ "Leda and the Swan Theme". methoduspi.com.br. 2 October 2020. Retrieved three October 2020.
28. ^ "The monument of the Dioscuri in Stoupa was inaugurated". www.in.gr (in Greek). 25 August 2020.
29. ^ Bull p.169
30. ^ Bloom, Harold (1972). Yeats. Oxford Up. pp. 363–66. ISBN978-0-19-501603-ane.
31. ^ Paglia, Camille (2006). Break, Blow, Fire. Random Business firm. pp. 114–18. ISBN978-0-375-72539-5.
32. ^ Darío, Rubén; Andrew Hurley; Greg Simon; Steven F. White (2005). Ilan Stavans (ed.). Selected Writings: Ruben Dario . Penguin. pp. 20–21. ISBN978-0-14-303936-v.
33. ^ Third Vintage Contemporaries Edition, 2008, pg106
34. ^ This Was Hollywood [@thiswashollywood].(2020, March 10)Marlene Dietrich at a costume political party in 1935[...] [Instagram Post]. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/p/B9kFMmQAsU4/? igshid=16l8o2ndth503&epik=dj0yJnU9Y2lueEpURWREeVZidDVXZGVsVGdhOWd5T0pPQllkYzImcD0wJm49akFJNFFSdnlrMFdaUnRaQzlrVEJjUSZ0PUFBQUFBR0hMUUZz
35. ^ Gopaldas, A. (2021, June 22). An up-close wait at the savoir-faire behind the swan dress from Dior Cruise 2022. Faddy Singapore. https://vogue.sg/dior-swan-dress/
36. ^ Dior. (2021, June 21) Countless meters of white tulle [...]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/dior/status/1407081359496167428
37. ^ Furness, Hannah (28 April 2012). "'Mythical' swan photo taken down subsequently 'bestiality' fears". The Daily Telegraph.

References [edit]

• Bull, Malcolm, The Mirror of the Gods, How Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Heathen Gods, Oxford UP, 2005, ISBN 0-xix-521923-half-dozen

External links [edit]

• Version of Leda and the Swan myth, in the "Fabulae" of Hyginus
• Bas relief from the British Museum that appears as the scene does in the Yeats sonnet
• Ovid Illustrated – large site from the University of Virginia, where many depictions of Leda and the Swan from Renaissance and later on editions of the Metamorphoses will (eventually) be found.
• Yeats' "Leda and the Swan": an paradigm'south coming of age
• Greek vase from the Getty
• Samuelson blog with thoughts and pictures
• 16th century Venetian painting past Il Padovanino
• Alternative particular view of the Getty vase
• Roman statue from the Getty
• Baroque statuary from the Getty
• Sculpture c 1900
• Leda and the swan – Bronze miniature
• Leda and the Swan, by Tintoretto, from the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence; explore other depictions of Leda and the Swan and compare to similar themes
• "Leda and the Hat Pivot". Sculpture. Victoria and Albert Museum. Archived from the original on 10 March 2009. Retrieved 24 July 2007.
• Jai Vilas Palace Museum, Gwalior, India

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leda_and_the_Swan

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