Léda et le Cygne

In 1601 Rubens was 24 and newly arrived in Italy, a Flemish painter determined to learn everything the south could teach him. One of the things he studied was a painting he could no longer see. Michelangelo had made a Leda decades earlier, a reclining nude entwined with Jupiter in the form of a swan, and that canvas had long since vanished, known only through copies and prints. Rubens took its twisting pose and made it his own, warming the cool Italian design with heavier, more sensuous flesh. He would paint the subject twice in these Italian years. Look at how her body coils back on itself, the pose lifted almost intact from the lost Michelangelo that Rubens was quietly keeping alive.