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Author: * DIonysia Xanthippos -
13 Posts
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185 Posts
sitewide.
Date: Mar 1, 2007 - 19:55
 Cesare da Sesto's (?) copy of Leonardo's Leda and the Swan. c.1505-1510. Oil on wood. Wilton House, Salisbury,UK.
FOR JOAN:
Fusing two moments in time, Leonardo shows the offspring of the union between Zeus, disguised as a swan, and Leda, by the two pairs of twins hatching out at her feet. The twin boys are Castor and Pollux, and below them, the twin girls, Helen and Clytemnestra. It was the rape or abduction of Helen, "the face that launched a thousand ships," that ignited the Trojan War; and her sister, Clytemnestra, who in a way concluded it by assassinating its leader, Agamemnon, upon his return, in revenge for sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia to the gods to get winds up for the launching of the warships. Hence Yeats' line: "and Agamemnon dead"
in his sonnet, "Leda and the Swan" (see my previous post).
More to come on Leonardo's painting, and art by others on Leda & the Swan, including Michelangelo.
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