レダと白鳥

Leonardo painted a Leda of his own, and then it vanished. Sometime in the 16th century the original was lost, and today we know it mainly through copies like this one, made by Francesco Melzi, the young Milanese nobleman who became Leonardo's closest pupil and, later, the keeper of his notebooks. Look at how the four infants hatch from two great eggs at Leda's feet, twins born from her union with Jupiter, who came to her disguised as a swan. The pose twists the body one way and the head the other, a knot of movement Leonardo worked out in drawings. When the old master left for France in 1516, Melzi went with him, and much of what survives of Leonardo's late ideas passed through this pupil's hands.