Leda with Her Children

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Kneeling Leda with Her Children is a 16th‑century painting by Giampietrino, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci. It shows Leda with her children after Zeus, who had turned into a swan to seduce her. In this version the swan isn’t shown, but eggshells hint at the divine moment. The work is connected to Leonardo’s Leda and the Swan, with sketch preparations in Windsor Castle, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, and Chatsworth House.

Infrared imaging found two underdrawings: one for Leda and the children, and a second that copies Leonardo’s Virgin and Child with Saint Anne in the Louvre. This suggests there was an original Leonardo drawing used by Giampietrino. It isn’t certain whether Giampietrino used Leonardo’s exact cartoon for Leda. A possible model for the figures could be the ancient statue of the Crouching Venus. The main figures were painted around 1512–1520 by Giampietrino, while the Nordic landscape was painted by Cesare Bernazzano, who worked with Leonardo’s pupils.

Goethe admired the painting in Kassel in the late 1700s and early 1800s, thinking it was an original Leonardo. The painting’s history after that is long and eventful: it was bought in Paris in 1756 by William VIII, later altered and misattributed; looted during the Napoleonic Wars; resurfaced in 1821 and moved through several collectors until it reached The Hague. In World War II, Hermann Göring acquired it and stored it in Altaussee. After the war it was recovered and, in 1962, returned to Hesse, where it remains today.