Leda and the Swan

Tintoretto painted this in Venice in the 1550s, for a private room rather than a church or a public hall. The story is one Renaissance patrons liked to own quietly: the god Jupiter takes the form of a swan to seduce Leda, queen of Sparta. What is striking is how domestic he makes it. Leda reclines on a rich Venetian bed in a curtained chamber, and around her the ordinary business of a household goes on, a maidservant to one side, a little dog, a caged bird by the wall. The swan is drawn toward her almost like a household pet. The picture's authorship was once doubted, then confirmed when it was cleaned in the 1980s and 1990s.