Leda and the Swan

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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
National Gallery, London
)
Roman oil lamp, 1st century AD

Leda and the Swan is a story and subject in art from

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)

Eroticism

Prado
)

The historian Procopius claims, in his Secret History, that the Roman Empress Theodora acted in a reproduction of this particular myth at some point in her youth in the early sixth century CE prior to her becoming the empress. This account is heavily disputed for the biases Roman aristocrats including Procopius had towards the role of women and the reputation of actresses and sex workers at the time.

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

antique carved gem of the subject, both with reclining Ledas.[6]

The earliest known explicit Renaissance depiction is one of the many

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.

obverse of a medal celebrating a Roman courtesan.[12]

In painting

See also: Leda and the Swan (Leonardo)
Leda and the Swan, copy by Cesare da Sesto after a lost original by Leonardo, 1515–1520, Oil on canvas, Wilton House, England.

A fresco depicting the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan was unearthed at the Pompeii archeological site.[13]

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,[14] and the one at Wilton House
in the United Kingdom (illustrated).

Also lost, and probably deliberately destroyed, is

National Gallery, London.[15] 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.[16]

Correggio

The last very famous Renaissance painting of the subject is

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.[17]

There were many other depictions in the Renaissance, including cycles of book illustrations to Ovid, but most were derivative of the compositions mentioned above.

Expressionist
treatments.

Oleksa Novakivskyi's Leda and the Swan, Ukraine

Also from that era were sculptures of the theme by Antonin Mercié and Max Klinger.[21]

Paul Cézanne's Leda and the Swan[22]

In modern and contemporary art

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.[23]

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 und der Schwan in 1964. The film retains the classical motif, portraying, for most of its duration, a young woman embracing a swan.[citation needed]

There is a life-sized marble statue of Leda and the Swan at the

Jai Vilas Palace Museum in Gwalior, Northern Madhya Pradesh, India.[24]

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. Genieve Figgis painted her version of Leda and the Swan in 2018 after an earlier work by François Boucher. Figgis’ contemporary version reinvents the idyllic romantic scene of lavish playfulness with a dark humor creating a scene of profanity and horror.[27][28] There is a sculpture in neon lights depicting Leda and the Swan in Berlin, near Sonnenallee metro station and the Estrel hotel, designed by AES+F. 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.[citation needed]

Argos, Greece
, 50 - 100 CE

In poetry

A mosaic from the Sanctuary of Aphrodite, Palea Paphos Cyprus. Cyprus Museum, Nicosia. Around 3rd century AD

Ronsard wrote a poem on La Défloration de Lède, perhaps inspired by the Michelangelo, which he may well have known. He imagines the beak going into Leda's mouth.[29]

"Leda and the Swan" is a sonnet by

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.[30] Camille Paglia, who called the poem "the greatest poem of the twentieth century," and said "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."[31]
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.[32]

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.

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"[citation needed]

radio play Three 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.[citation needed
]

In literature

Leda and the Swan by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1895

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.

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

In Robert Galbraith's 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 one character who is an artist in the novel.[34] Furthermore, the other protagonist of the Strike series, the eponymous detective Cormoran Strike, was born to a mother named Leda and swans appear in several of the novels.[35]

In fashion

Leda and the Swan statue from Achilleion in Corfu, Greece.

In 1935, German-born movie star Marlene Dietrich wore a dramatically designed Leda costume to a Hollywood costume party. Designed by the acclaimed costume designer Travis Banton, a longtime Dietrich collaborator, the white tulle and feather dress featured a thigh-slit, a mid-length train and, most characteristically, a fabric and feather "swan" neck which coiled around Dietrich's own neck, as well a pair of large feathered wings, one stretching downwards across her chest and the other one upwards across her left shoulder.[36]

66 years later, at the 2001 Academy Awards, Icelandic singer Björk wore a dress by Marjan Pejoski in nude mesh and a white tulle skirt. The skirt gradually narrowed upwards over the torso to turn into a swan-neck made out of fabric which coiled around the wearer's neck in exactly the same way as Dietrich's dress from 1935. Although Dietrich's costume remains largely unknown to the general public, Björk's dress "attained cult status instantly"[37] and became an icon of red carpet culture. Yet, the reference to Marlene Dietrich's costume was rarely (if ever) mentioned at the time.

In June 2021, Maria Grazia Chiuri as creative director for the French fashion house Dior, designed a collection strongly inspired by Hellenistic culture, the Olympic Games, and Ancient Greek Mythology, and showed it at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens as an homage to the Olympic tradition (the collection was shown a month before the beginning of the 2020 Summer Olympics). The collection's closing pièce de résistance was a Leda-inspired swan dress. The immediate visual similarity between Chiuri's swan Dress and Björk's swan dress sparked excitement on social media as most people inevitably thought the Dior dress was directly inspired by Pejoski's iconic 2001 creation. However, only a few days later, Dior openly defended the inspiration of the dress referring to it on its Twitter account as a recreation of a costume worn by Marlene Dietrich, who was, famously, an important and loyal client of the French brand during the 40s and 50s.[38] 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 apart from Björk's red-carpet 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

Leda column of Las Incantadas, Louvre.

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.[citation needed]

Musical artist

Swan Upon Leda in 2022, referencing the myth as a tool to advocate for reproductive rights.[citation needed
]

The 2021 wordless, 3D feature film Leda transports the myth to dark forests and deep lakes that surround a mid-19th century mansion.[39] Directed by Samuel Tressler IV and starring Adeline Thery, the story focuses on a pregnant Leda, nightmarishly haunted by the image of a swan and lost between dream and reality in a state of trauma.

In commerce

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][40]

Modern censorship

In April 2012 an art gallery in London, England, was instructed by the police to remove a modern exhibit of Leda and the Swan.[41] The law concerned was Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, condemning 'violent pornography', brought in by the Labour Party government of 2005–2010.[citation needed]

Gallery

  • Leda and Zeus transformed into a swan. A 2nd century BCE Roman version of an earlier Greek statue attributed to Timotheos from the 300s BCE. More than two dozen examples of this statue survive. Palazzo Nuovo (Capitoline Museums), Rome.
    Leda and Zeus transformed into a swan. A 2nd century BCE Roman version of an earlier Greek statue attributed to Timotheos from the 300s BCE. More than two dozen examples of this statue survive. Palazzo Nuovo (Capitoline Museums), Rome.
  • Leda and the Swan, ancient fresco from Pompeii
    Leda and the Swan, ancient fresco from Pompeii
  • Leda and the Swan copy by Giovanni Francesco Melzi after the lost painting by Leonardo, 1508–1515, oil on canvas, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy.
    Leda and the Swan copy by Giovanni Francesco Melzi after the lost painting by Leonardo, 1508–1515, oil on canvas, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy.
  • Drawing by Cornelis Bos after the lost original by Michelangelo. Between 1530 and 1550
    Drawing by Cornelis Bos after the lost original by Michelangelo. Between 1530 and 1550
  • Leda and the Swan. Georg Pencz
    Leda and the Swan. Georg Pencz
  • Leda and the Swan by Benvenuto Cellini
    Leda and the Swan by Benvenuto Cellini
  • Leda and the Swan, by Massimiliano Soldani, 1725
    Leda and the Swan, by Massimiliano Soldani, 1725
  • Attributed to François Boucher, 1740, oil on canvas.
    Attributed to François Boucher, 1740, oil on canvas.
  • Leda and the Swan, charcoal, gouache on paper. (Ulpiano Checa)
    Leda and the Swan, charcoal, gouache on paper. (Ulpiano Checa)
  • Leda and the Swan by Fernando Botero
    Leda and the Swan by Fernando Botero, 1996
  • Egg sculpture on Pefnos, 2020, by Yiannis Gouzos and Petros Themelis.[42]
    Egg sculpture on Pefnos, 2020, by Yiannis Gouzos and Petros Themelis.[42]

Notes

  1. ^ J. Paul Getty Museum. "Statue of Leda and the Swan". Getty. J. Paul Getty Museum. Retrieved 14 March 2023.
  2. 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. ISBN 978-0-8142-0162-6
    .
  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. ^ 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.
  11. ^ British Museum copy; The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Special Exhibitions: Poets, Lovers, and Heroes in Italian Mythological Prints
  12. ^ Abondio, NGA Washington
  13. ^ "Fresco depicting erotic scene uncovered in Pompeii ruins". 20 November 2018.
  14. ISBN 88-09-03676-X, 9788809036765 google books
  15. ^ 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.
  16. ^ 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".
  17. ^ Bull 169.
  18. ^ Bacchiacca (Francesco d'Ubertino): Leda and the Swan | Work of Art | Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
  19. ^ Bull 170.
  20. ^ "Leda and the Swan". Archived from the original on 8 April 2007. Retrieved 10 March 2007.
  21. ^ Dijkstra, Bram, Idols of Perversity, Oxford University Press, New York, 1986 p.315
  22. 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.
  23. ^ Cy Twombly (8 September 2023). "Leda and the Swan".
  24. ^ "Jiwaji Rao Scindia Museum – Collection". Archived from the original on 11 February 2015. Retrieved 11 February 2015.
  25. ^ Pieszak, Devonna. "Carole Harmel", Catalogue essay, Chicago: Galerija, 1983.
  26. ^ Bone, James. "Art Facts: a mix of media on Wells Street", Chicago Reader, 11 March 1983.
  27. doi:10.3390/rel12020107
    .
  28. ^ "Leda and the Swan Theme". methoduspi.com.br. 2 October 2020. Retrieved 3 October 2020.
  29. ^ Bull p.169; the poem, in French and English
  30. ISBN 978-0-19-501603-1
    .
  31. ISBN 978-0-375-72539-5
    .
  32. ISBN 978-0-14-303936-5
    .
  33. ^ Third Vintage Contemporaries Edition, 2008, pg106
  34. ^ "Troubled Blood | Latest Crime Novel By Robert Galbraith". robert-galbraith.com. Retrieved 27 April 2023.
  35. ^ Lindsay. "Swans". The Strike and Ellacot Files. Retrieved 22 February 2024.
  36. ^ "This Was Hollywood [@thiswashollywood". 10 March 2020.
  37. ^ Gopaldas, A. (2021, June 22). An up-close look at the savoir-faire behind the swan dress from Dior Cruise 2022. Vogue Singapore. https://vogue.sg/dior-swan-dress/
  38. ^ Dior. (2021, June 21) Endless meters of white tulle [...]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/dior/status/1407081359496167428
  39. ^ Richard Kuipers, Sydney Film Festival
  40. ^ U.S. Patent Office (1949). Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office. United States: U.S. Patent Office. p. 401.
  41. ^ Furness, Hannah (28 April 2012). "'Mythical' swan photo taken down after 'bestiality' fears". The Daily Telegraph.
  42. ^ "The monument of the Dioscuri in Stoupa was inaugurated". www.in.gr (in Greek). 25 August 2020.

References

  • Bull, Malcolm, The Mirror of the Gods, How Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Pagan Gods, Oxford UP, 2005,
    ISBN 0-19-521923-6

Further reading

External links

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