# Leda [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [LEONARDO da Vinci]() - Date: 1451-1500 - Technique: Oil on panel, 112 x 86 cm ## Commentary In the inventories, the famous painting of Leda and the Swan was for three hundred years \(until 1893\) thought to be by Sodoma, or a copy by the latter. Its attribution is still doubtful, but from recent research into wills it is now thought to be an unfinished painting that was in Leonardo's house at the time of his death \(1519\) and inherited by his pupil Salai who reworked it. X-rays have revealed another composition beneath this one depicting Leda's four children \(Castor, Pollux, Helen and Clytemnestra\) emerging from the swan's eggs. Leda with her arms around the swan \(Jupiter\) in an elegant curving pose, her hair partially escaping from her plaits, set against the spacious river landscape, was most certainly conceived by Leonardo, but executed by different artists. ## Related artworks - [Adoration of the Magi]() - [Allegory with wolf and eagle]() - [Anatomical studies \(larynx and leg\)]() - [Anatomical studies of a male shoulder]() - [Anatomical studies of the shoulder]() - [Anatomical studies]() - [Annunciation \(detail\)]() - [Annunciation \(detail\)]() - [Annunciation \(detail\)]() - [Annunciation \(detail\)]() - [Annunciation \(detail\)]() - [Annunciation \(detail\)]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()