After Michelangelo, 'Leda and the Swan', after 1530

Leda and the Swan

After Michelangelo

Not on display

About the work

Overview

This is an old copy, badly damaged in places, of a now lost painting that Michelangelo made for Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, in 1530. The Duke had recently received three mythological paintings from Titian, including the National Gallery’s Bacchus and Ariadne, so in accepting the commission Michelangelo was competing directly with Titian.

Here the Greek god Zeus in the form of a swan seduces Leda, Queen of Sparta. Her pose seems to derive from sarcophagus reliefs and gems, and is similar to that of Michelangelo’s marble Night (Medici Chapel, Florence) completed in 1531.

Titian’s Danäe (Capodimonte, Naples), in turn, appears to have been made in response to Michelangelo’s Leda. Where Michelangelo’s Leda seems akin to a hard-edged marble relief sculpture, Titian’s Danäe is meltingly voluptuous, emphasising colour and light. Michelangelo saw the Danäe in Rome in 1545, praising its colouring, naturalness and power to entrance but criticising the draughtsmanship.

In-depth

Michelangelo painted a panel picture of Leda and the swan for Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. The Duke had recently received the Worship of Venus (Prado, Madrid), Bacchus and Ariadne, and the Bacchanal of the Andrians (Prado, Madrid) from Titian. In accepting the commission, Michelangelo was competing directly with Titian, and he completed the painting by October 1530. The exact size of the painting is not known but Condivi, Michelangelo’s later biographer, says it was very large.

However, after falling out with the Duke’s representative, Michelangelo gave both the painting and its cartoon to his pupil, Antonio Mini, who took them with him to France. Neither the cartoon nor the painting survived, although we know the composition from a detailed engraving by Cornelis Bos. Only one detailed study by Michelangelo survives – a drawing in red chalk of a youth’s head bending forwards (Casa Buonarotti, Florence), which appears to be about half the size of the original painting.

The National Gallery’s picture is an old copy, made after the original painting or its cartoon, and is very badly damaged in places. In it we see the Greek god Zeus in the form of a swan seducing Leda. According to legend, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus, and, at the same time, Castor and Clytemnestra, the children of her husband Tyndareus, King of Sparta. The hatchlings Castor and Polydeuces were included in Michelangelo’s original composition. Leda’s pose seems to derive from sarcophagus reliefs and gems, and is similar to that of Michelangelo’s marble Night (Medici Chapel, Florence) completed in 1531.

Titian’s Danäe (Capodimonte, Naples) appears to have been made in response to Michelangelo’s Leda. Where Michelangelo’s Leda seems akin to a hard-edged marble relief sculpture, Titian’s Danäe is meltingly voluptuous, emphasising colour and light. Michelangelo saw the Danäe in Rome in 1545, praising its colouring, naturalness and power to entrance but criticising the draughtsmanship.

It is possible that the National Gallery’s painting may be a copy made from Michelangelo’s original cartoon by Rosso Fiorentino; the Italian patron of the arts, Cassiano del Pozzo, on his visit to Fontainebleau in 1625 spoke of a Leda there by Rosso painted after a drawing by Michelangelo. At the end of the seventeenth century it was said that the original was burnt by Des Noyers, Superintendant of Fontainebleau, on the grounds of indecency. We have no evidence whether this was the case.

When the Duke of Northumberland presented this painting to the National Gallery in 1838, he stated that it was not suitable for public exhibition. For this reason it does not appear in any National Gallery catalogue published before 1915.

Key facts

Details

Full title: Leda and the Swan
Artist: After Michelangelo
Artist dates: 1475 - 1564
Date made: after 1530
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 105.4 × 141 cm
Acquisition credit: Presented by the Duke of Northumberland, 1838
Inventory number: NG1868
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: Hugh Percy, 3rd Duke of Northumberland

Provenance

In France, possibly Paris, in the 1730s; by 1736 until at least 1742, the Hon. John Spencer (1708-1746), Althorp, Northamptonshire; moved to Wimbledon Park, which John inherited from his grandmother Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough in 1744; by 1761 - 1792, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), London (probably given to Reynolds in the 1760s by Wimbledon, but not listed in Walpole's inventory from the late 1770s); by descent to Reynolds' niece Mary Palmer, Marchioness of Thomond (b. 1750; m. 1792, 5th Earl of Inchiquin who became 1st Marquess of Thomond 1800; d. 1820), London; sold at Thomond (Inchiquin) sale (Christie's, London, 17 March 1795, lot 87, for £71 guineas); acquired by Thomas Noel Hill, 2nd Baron Berwick of Attingham (1770-1832), Attingham Hall, Shropshire; possibly sold to Michael Bryan, whose sale (Coxe, Burrell and Foster, 7 May 1804, lot 70), purchased by Thomas Moore Slade for £23 3s 0d (Getty Provenance Index, sale catalog Br-260, lot 0070); anonymous sale (Coxe, Burrell and Foster, London, 10 June 1805, lot 63, bought in for 18 guineas); Brogden sale (probably James Brogden, MP for Launceston, 1765-1842; Coxe, London, 12 June 1812, lot 17, bought in for £105 guineas); possibly Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland (1742-1817); by 1838, Hugh Percy, 3rd Duke of Northumberland (1785-1847), Alnwick Castle (likely acquired from Brogden, as research indicates that of the 17 lots in Brogden's sale, 12 were bought in and 6 of those 12 can subsequently be traced to Northumberland's collection, per Burton Fredericksen's letter in NG1865 curatorial dossier); gifted to National Gallery by the Duke of Northumberland in 1838.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Cecil Gould, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools’, London 1987; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2009

Botticellitől Tizianóig: Az itáliai festészet két évszázadának remekművei

Szépművészeti Múzeum

28 October 2009 - 14 February 2010
2010

Michelangelo: The Drawings of a Genius

Albertina

8 October 2010 - 9 January 2011
2016

Painters' Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck

The National Gallery (London)

23 June 2016 - 4 September 2016
2016

Orlando Furioso: 500 Years

Palazzo dei Diamanti

24 September 2016 - 29 January 2017
2019

The Triumph of the Body: Michelangelo and Sixteenth Century Italian Draughtsmanship

Szépművészeti Múzeum

5 April 2019 - 30 June 2019

Bibliography

1591

F. Bocchi, Le bellezze della città di Fiorenza, Florence 1591
1669

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1715

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1745

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1746

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1750

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1812

Peter Coxe, Burrell, and Foster, A Catalogue of a Select and Singularly Valuable Collection of Paintings, the Property of a Gentleman of Fortune Brogden, Whose Taste will Display Itself in the Choice of the Noble Productions of those Great Masters,…, Which will be Sold by Auction, by Peter Coxe… on 12 of June, 1812, London, 12 June 1812
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1878

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1885

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1898

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1899

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1905

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1908

H. Thode, Michelangelo: Kritische Untersuchungen über seine Werke, 3 vols, Berlin 1908
1909

K. Frey, Die Handzeichungen Michelagniolos Buonarroti, Berlin 1909
1916

R. Oldenbourg, 'Rubens in Italien', Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen, XXXVII, 1916, pp. 262-86
1923

M. Roy, 'La "Léda" de Michel-Ange et celle du Rosso', Gazette des beaux-arts, VII, 1923, pp. 65-82
1926

E. Steinmann, 'Kompositionen Michelangelos in seltenen Stichen', in Festschrift zum sechzigsten Geburtstag von Paul Clemen, 31 Oktober 1926, Bonn 1926, pp. 420-8
1928

C. Holroyd, Michael Angelo Buonarroti, trans. A. Condivi, London 1928
1929

M. Roy, 'La Léda du Rosso confondu avec celle de Michel-Ange', in Artistes et Monuments de la Renaissance en France, Paris 1929, pp. 16-137
1938

B. Berenson, The Drawings of Florentine Painters, 2nd edn, Chicago 1938
1947

C. de Tolnay, Michelangelo: The Medici Chapel, 5 vols, Princeton 1948
1948

W. Schöne, 'Die Leda von Michelangelo und Rubens', Kunst, I, 1948, pp. 30-5
1953

J. Wilde, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings of the British Museum: Michelangelo and His Studio, London 1953
1957

J. Wilde, 'Notes on the Genesis of Michelangelo's Leda', in D.J. Gordon (ed.), Fritz Saxl 1890-1948: A Volume of Memorial Essays from his Friends in England, London 1957, pp. 270-80
1958

E. Wind, Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance, Harmondsworth 1958
1959

L. Düssler, Die Zeichnungen des Michelangelo, Berlin 1959
1962

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1963

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1964

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1965

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1968

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1969

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1969

E.R. Knauer, 'Leda', Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, XI, 1969, pp. 5-35
1971

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1972

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1974

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1975

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1976

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1976

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1980

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1981

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1987

Gould, Cecil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1987
1987

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1988

M. Hirst, Michelangelo and His Drawings, New Haven 1988
1988

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1990

B.H. Meyer, 'Leonardo's Hypothetical Painting of Leda and the Swan', Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, XXXIV, 1990, pp. 279-94
1992

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1993

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1994

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1995

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1995

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1996

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1997

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1999

E.J. Sluijter, 'Emulating Sensual Beauty: Representations of Danaë from Gossaert to Rembrandt', Simiolus, XXVII/1-2, 1999, pp. 4-45
2000

F.H. Jacobs, 'Aretino and Michelangelo, Dolce and Titian: Femmina, Masculo, Grazia', Art Bulletin, LXXXII/1, 2000, pp. 51-67
2001

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2001

W.E. Wallace, 'Michelangelo's Leda: The Diplomatic Context', Renaissance Studies, XV/4, 2001, pp. 473-99
2001

M. Warner, 'Leda and the Swan: The Unbearable Matter of Bliss', in J. Marenbon (ed.), Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: A Festschrift for Peter Dronke, Leiden 2001, pp. 263-79
2004

S.J. Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d'Este, New Haven 2004
2005

H. Chapman et al., Michelangelo Drawings: Closer to the Master (exh. cat. Teylers Museum, 6 October 2005 - 8 January 2006; British Museum, 23 March - 25 June 2006), Haarlem 2005
2007

M.H. Loh, Titian Remade: Repetition and the Transformation of Early Modern Italian Art, Los Angeles 2007
2007

C.A. Luchinat, Michelangelo pittore, Milan 2007
2009

J.K. Nelson, 'The Battle of the Female Nudes: Michelangelo vs. Leonardo (and Titian)', in M. Koshikawa (ed.), L'arte erotica del rinascimento: Atti del colloquio internazionale, Tokyo, 2008, Tokyo 2009, pp. 19-27
2010

A. Wickham, 'Thomas Lawrence and the Royal Academy's Cartoon of "Leda and the Swan" after Michelangelo', The Burlington Magazine, CLII/1286, 2010, pp. 297-302

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

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