Leda and the Swan, by Cesare da Sesto (c.1477–1523) after Leonardo da Vinci, c.1505–10, oil on wood, Wilton House Collection, Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK, 96.5 × 73.7cm (38 × 29in)
It is Cesare da Sesto’s copy that allows us to envisage Leonardo’s lost painting. Following the text of the Greek (and Roman) myth, Leonardo painted Leda, the beautiful wife of Tyndareus, King of Sparta, with a swan, the Olympian god Zeus (Roman: Jupiter) in disguise.
The myth relates that Zeus came to her by a river disguised as a swan and lay with her. The naked Leda is depicted standing in a contrapposto position. Zeus, the swan, stands on a small base to her left. He wears a celebratory garland of flowers around his lower neck. He places his right wing seductively around Leda’s waist and cranes his neck toward her face. She encircles his neck with her arms but modestly looks away from his gaze.
In the myth, the results of the union of Leda and the swan are eggs that hatch the ‘heavenly twins’, mortal Castor and immortal Polydeuces, and the immortal Helen and mortal Clytemnestra. In the painting, four lively babies, freed and newly hatched from the eggshells, lie on the ground in a carpet of wild flowers, at the feet of their mother.
Leonardo’s sketches for Leda and the Swan give clues to the content of the original painting, now lost.
Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657), secretary to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, and nephew of Pope Urban VIII, saw Leonardo’s painting of Leda and the Swan on a visit to Fontainebleau in 1625. His description included the detail of a ‘standing figure of Leda, almost entirely naked, with the swan at her feet, and two eggs, from whose shells come forth four babies’.
During the preparatory work for the painting, Leonardo changed the form of Leda from kneeling to standing and gave the swan a more prominent position. In this drawing, the figure of Leda is kneeling by a waterbank surrounded by aquatic plants. Her right arm points down to reveal four babies lying among the plants, the result of her union with a swan (the god Zeus in disguise). He, by her side, embraces her with one wing as his head leans toward hers.
Sketches of Leda and the Swan, with Leda both kneeling and standing next to the swan, date from 1504, when Leonardo was working also on sketches for the Battle of Anghiari, for the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Signoria.
The studies for the head of Leda, c.1504–6, are preparatory drawings for Leonardo’s painting Leda and the Swan, now lost. The painting was recorded in the estate of Leonardo’s assistant Salai in 1525.
The work is known through several studies created by Leonardo, and a close copy of the painting made by Cesare da Sesto (c.1477–1523), painted c.1505–10. Other copies also exist.
In these studies the hair of Leda is exquisitely styled and illustrated, from the front of the head, the back of the head and the crown.
The hair is intricately braided. The whorls and wisps of hair, according to Leonardo, mimic water in circular motion.
This drawing is inscribed by Leonardo da Vinci, questo spole eppo! re sanza gu’l arrstarsi (this can be removed and put on without hurting it). This might be in reference to the hair being a wig, which the model could put on for Leonardo’s preparatory sketches of Leda, and then for the actual painting.
The hair in Cesare da Sesto’s painting Leda and the Swan, after Leonardo da Vinci, bears a close resemblance to Leonardo’s preparatory drawings.
A study for the head of Leda that focuses on the intricate styling of the young woman’s hair. The elaborately plaited hair styled into whorls of braiding, according to Leonardo’s notes, may relate to the eddying whirls created in moving water and possibly a link to the river habitat of the swan (the mythical god Zeus in disguise).
