Leda: Why did Leonardo choose the subject?
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 One more question connected with the Leda remains to be answered. Why did Leonardo choose the subject? It is no answer to say that he wanted to paint a female nude in an attitude of contraposto. We can be sure that the myth of Leda had some special meaning for him, although at first sight at the furthest remove from his nature. No classical myth is more unblushingly pagan, and Leonardo was the least pagan artist of the Renaissance, never content to enjoy the sensuous surface of life, but searching for the bone beneath the skin. To him, then, the Leda myth could not be what it was to Correggio, an allegory of sensual ecstasy. He saw in it not the joy and beauty of sexual intercourse, but its mystery, and its analogy with the creative processes of nature. His Leda symbolises the female aspect of creation. She is a fertility goddess, a Diana of Ephesus, her female attributes emphasised not by monstrous exaggeration, but by ingenuity of pose. The downcast eyes, taken by Lomazzo as a sign of modesty, are dark, secret, remote. Even those elaborate coils of hair seem appropriate to the intricacy of conception. All round this passive figure, nature is bursting with new life, thick grasses writhe out of the earth,, thick leaves weigh down the branches; and at her feet, four human babies tumble out of the broken eggs.That such an interpretation is not fanciful is proved by a study of Leonardo's drawings. The very first sketch for the Leda is on a sheet at Windsor on which there is also an anatomical study. Now this study can be related directly to a number of drawings in the Anatomical MS. B, which deal with the problem of generation. One of these in particular bears a study of female anatomy very similar to the Leda and evidently of the same date. And in the drawing the creative process symbolised in the Leda is examined with scientific detachment.
Leonardo's imagery arouses admiration rather than delight. The intellectual treatment of a theme usually reserved for the emotions, is disquieting, even though, as in this case, it displays an intellect of extraordinary subtlety and power. In few of his creations do we feel more clearly the distance which separates Leonardo from common humanity.
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