Leda and the Swan (1508) - (Only copies survive) Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy

The motif of Leda and the Swan from Greek mythology, in which the Greek god Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan, was rarely seen in Gothic art, but resurfaced as a classicizing theme, with erotic overtones, in Italian painting and sculpture of the 16th Century. The most familiar examples are the copies of Leonardo da Vinci's lost painting, with the two sets of infant twins; Correggio's elaborate composition of c. 1530 (Berlin); and two versions of a lost Michelangelo that is known from an engraving by Cornelis de Bos, c. 1563: the marble sculpture by Bartolomeo Ammanati in the Bargello, Florence, and the painting after Michelangelo, c. 1530, in the National Gallery, London. The Michelangelo composition is a definitive example of Mannerism.

Leda and the Swan furnished a common motif for the visual arts into the 19th century.

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