Leda and the Swan

Painted in Venice in the 1550s, this shows one of the most repeated stories in Renaissance art: the god Jupiter, disguised as a swan, coming to Leda. Tintoretto stages it inside a Venetian bedchamber, with a maidservant and a caged bird beside the bed, so the myth unfolds among the furnishings of a wealthy household. The canvas travelled a long way before Florence. It hung in the Orleans collection in Paris, passed through English hands across the 18th and 19th centuries, and reached the Uffizi only in 1895, as a gift. For years scholars doubted whether it was fully Tintoretto's own hand or largely his workshop's, and the cleanings of 1988 and 1994 finally settled the question in his favour. The swan stretches up toward Leda as she turns to receive it, while the caged bird sits shut behind bars, watching.