LEONARDO DA VINCI 1452-1519

Leonardo da VINCI Vinci, 1452–Amboise, 1519 Study for Leda Kneeling Black chalk, pen and brown ink About 1504–1505 According to legend, Leda, daughter ofThestius, King of Aetolia, was impregnated on the same night by her husband (the Spartan kingTyndareus) and by Zeus (who had seduced her in the form of a swan). She later gave birth to two eggs containing two sets of twins: Castor and Clytemnestra, the children of the mortalTyndareus, and Pollux and Helen, the offspring of the god. Leonardo designed a first composition on this mythological theme in which the heroine is depicted on one knee as if about to stand, surrounded by the swan and the newly hatched twins. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, inv. I 466 Crouching Aphrodite, known as the Venus of Vienna Marble 2nd century AD, after a Greek original from the 3rd or 2nd century BC This fragmentary marble sculpture is an archetypal image of the goddess Aphrodite crouching at her bath, with her head turned to the right and her right arm across her breast. Her son, Eros, once stood beside her, but all that remains is his hand on her back. Leonardo’s drawing of Leda kneeling in a landscape was probably inspired by a similar classical sculpture. Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, Musée du Louvre, Paris, MA 2240 (MNB 1292) 153 154