Antonio da Correggio - Leda and the Swan
- Title: Leda and the Swan
- Artist: Antonio da Correggio (1489-1534)
- Date: c. 1532
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 156 x 218 cm
- Location: Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany
- Photo credit: Google Arts & Culture on Wikimedia in 2011
Antonio da Correggio’s "Leda and the Swan" is a large, horizontal oil on canvas painted around 1530–32 and now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. It forms part of Correggio’s cycle "Amori di Giove" (Love affairs of Jupiter), commissioned by Duke Federico II Gonzaga of Mantua.
The setting of "Leda and the Swan" is a riverbank with a dense clump of trees.
Leda is sitting nude on rich draperies dropped over the roots of a large tree. Leda's body is shown in a complex, twisting pose while the swan-form of Jupiter, also known as Zeus, pushes between her legs. The bird's long neck is extended with its beak going to kiss Leda. Her arm is pulling in the bird sensually.
To the left, Correggio adds a small “orchestra” of putti: a youthful Cupid with his bow and lyre and two amoretti playing wind instruments, who turn the scene into a kind of erotic pastoral performance.
On the right, additional figures appear in the same continuous landscape. Those figures are probably other moments from the story: an earlier encounter with the swan in the river and a later scene where Leda dresses as the bird departs. This “continuous narrative,” showing successive episodes in one image, enriches the myth while keeping the eye moving along the gentle curve of the river and the rhythm of tree trunks and clouds.
Correggio’s typical technique of soft modeling, silvery light, and smoky sfumato make the flesh luminous and the whole scene feel both intimate, soft and dreamlike. The eroticism is unmistakable yet wrapped in an atmosphere of lyric beauty.
--