Leda and the Swan

This article is about the story and its depictions. For other uses, see Leda and the Swan (disambiguation).

"...this statue is a first-century Roman version of an earlier Greek statue from the 300s B.C. attributed to Timotheos. More than two dozen examples of this statue survive, attesting to the theme's popularity among the Romans. ...Both arms, most of the outstretched cloak, the swan's head, and the folds of cloth between Leda's legs are eighteenth-century restorations. The head, though ancient, is not original to this work, but comes from a statue of Venus".[1] Marble. Getty Villa
Leda and the Swan, a 16th-century copy after a lost painting by Michelangelo (National Gallery, London)
Roman oil lamp, 1st century AD

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 or rapes Leda, a Spartan queen. 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. According to many versions of the story, Zeus took the form of a swan and raped Leda on the same night she slept with her husband King Tyndareus. In some versions, she laid two eggs from which the children hatched.[2] In other versions, Helen is a daughter of Nemesis, the goddess who personified the disaster that awaited those suffering from the pride of Hubris.

Especially in art, the degree of consent by Leda to the relationship seems to vary considerably; there are numerous depictions, for example by Leonardo da Vinci, that show Leda affectionately embracing the swan, as their children play.

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,[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 as a classicizing theme, with erotic overtones, in the Italian Renaissance.

Further information: Leda (mythology)
  1. ^ J. Paul Getty Museum. "Statue of Leda and the Swan". Getty. J. Paul Getty Museum. Retrieved 14 March 2023.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ 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, 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 University Press. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-8142-0162-6.