Knowing
what we do of German artist Heinrich
Lossow (1840-1897), it is perhaps not surprising that he would eventually
tackle one of the most sexual myths of antiquity: the story of Leda and the Swan.
According
to myth, Zeus seduced (or raped) Leda on the same night she slept with her
husband King Tyndareus (King of Sparta).
The union bore several children, including Helen and Polydeuces, the
children of Zeus, as well as Castor and Clytemnestra, the children of her
husband, Tyndareus. In some versions of
the story, Leda laid two eggs from which the children were hatched.
The tale
seemed to fire the Renaissance imagination.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)
painted a picture illustrating the story – a painting which no longer
exists. (There is a copy, though, by Cesare da Sesto [1477–1523], which
gives us a good idea of what it was like.)
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475
-1564) painted it in tempera – it, too, no longer exists, though copies were
made from the cartoon. It is not beyond
supposition that both of these pictures were deliberately destroyed by later
generations who found the story (and its graphic depiction) wince-inducing.
The
power of the story outlasted the Renaissance – W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) wrote a version of the story in verse, and
the image has also been coopted by Cezanne
and other Modernists.
Lossow’s
painting is not going to erase any daydreams we may have of lost Leonardos or
Michelangelos, but it does have points of interest. The composition is simple, but effective. Starting with Leda’s boots, the central
figure forms an impressive S, leading all the way to the bend in the swan’s
neck. The quality of the swan’s feathers
is rendered with a few deft strokes in the dark hollow of the wing, and the
animal’s head is (thankfully!) mostly obscured by Leda’s throat.
Leda,
for her part, is clearly enraptured by the disguised god’s attention, and it is
no mistake that a blossom buds directly overhead. Perhaps what I find most interesting is that
it seems probable that the model for Leda was the same model for the monstrous,
sexually rapacious Enchantress that
we looked at in a previous post – even the headdress is similar.
Again,
I’m not quite sure that I am entirely comfortable with Lossow’s grasp of
anatomy. Surely Leda, when standing,
would have dumpy piano legs for a glamour-puss; nor am I sure where the one
visible wing of the swan drops to when obscured by her leg.
But
Lossow wears his erotic obsessions on his sleeve. In addition to the profusion of blossoms, it
is not too much of a stretch to liken the rolling fields of grass to pubic
hair, and Leda’s outstretched right hand is not warding off her attacker, but
taut with ecstasy.
Lossow’s
Leda is an easy picture to study, but a hard one to like – which, in in the
final analysis, may be my ultimate summation of his entire body of work. There is a great deal going on in much of it
– but not much of it is interesting or admirable. My initial choice to close out this look at
the artist was to examine A Precarious
Game in some depth (see below); but looking at it closely, I didn’t think
there was anything to say about it worth saying.
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