Leda2.0003_Laurencin

Leda2.0003_Laurencin

Philadelphia Museum of Art
OGCMA s.v. "Leda"
Classical Sources:
Homer, Od. 11.298-304
Homeric Hymns to The Dioscuri, 17 and 33
Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis 46ff.
Euripides Helen 17-21, 214-57, 1149
Strabo Geog. 10.2.24
Apollodorus Libr. 1.7.10, 3.10.5-7
Hyginus Fab. 77
Pausanias, 3.1.4, 3.13.8, 3.161.

Marie Laurencin, 1883-1956, "Leda and the Swan," (1923), oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art, accession number 1978-173-1, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles C. G. Chaplin, 1978.

Zeus disguises himself as a swan to seduce the wife of Tyndareus, Leda.

The offspring of this union are the Dioscuri (Castor and Polydeuces [or Pollux]), Clytemnestra, and Helen. In this moment, depicted by Laurencin, the prodigious children are not yet conceived.

Maurizio refers to classical and modern dichotomies in Leda myths — violent assault or consensual union? (E.g. Yeats vs. Laurencin) Leda's posturing in Laurencin's painting suggests that the union is welcome for both parties and pleasant.

For Further Reference: Scott, Clive. 1979. "A Theme and a Form: Leda and the Swan and the Sonnet," Modern Language Review 74:1-11.

For the prominence of this story in postclassical treatments, it is surprising that Ovid's Metamorphoses is not more elaborate in the telling. Arachne includes the seduction of Leda in her tapestry, but Ovid spends very little time in the details. (Click here for the text on Perseus.)

LOTS of treatments have been done, many distasteful. Want a tricky one to analyze? Try Constantin Brancusi's abstract sculpture (1920) Leda2.0100_Brancusi.

A funerary relief from 5th-century Egypt (Ashmolean AN1970.403) shows the myth used in a Christian context: the celebration of a chaste woman's fertility.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1400 – 1990’s, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.