Leda and the Swan with Eros, portrait of Antonia Minor

Roman art

This sculpture depicts Leda as she reclines on the banks of the river Eurotas. The figure is only partially covered by drapery, while a swan is perched on top of her, lightly touching her right breast. Behind her, cherub is leaning sweetly on her left arm.

The group was considered modern until recent conservation interventions that have ascertained the antiquity of the original nucleus, the missing parts of which were added in the nineteenth century. The head is unrelated, thought to be a portrait of Antonia Minor, niece of Augustus and mother of the emperor Claudius.

In 1826, it was located in the Gardens of Villa Borghese, while in 1832 it was reported in its present location in Room 1.   

Object details

Commentary

 ‘(Arachne) made Leda, reclining beneath the wings of the swan'.

(Ovid, The Metamorphoses VI, v. 109)

This sculpture is mentioned in the Gardens of Villa Borghese in a letter addressed by Minister Evasio Gozzani to Prince Camillo Borghese in 1826. In the register Statue e Oggetti di Scultura esistenti a Villa Borghese, e giudicati degni di Ristauro (Statues and Sculptural Objects Present in Villa Borghese and Deemed Worthy of Restoration), it was mentioned among the works destined to adorn the halls emptied by the Napoleonic appropriation of 1809; the cost of the conservation was estimated at ‘225 scudi’ (Archivio Segreto Vaticano, AB, b. 7457: Moreno, Sforzini 1987, pp. 350, 353). In 1832, Nibby recalled it in its present location in Room 1 (Nibby 1832, p. 61).

Young Leda is partially reclined, propped up on her left elbow against a rock on the banks of the river Eurotas. The figure is naked, except for a cloth draped on the ground and covering her left arm and right leg. The latter is partially bent to support the swan. The left arm is adorned with an armilla, or bracelet, and in her hand is a floral garland. Behind her stands a cherub who is reaching out to her, his eyes looking up at the female figure that he is gently stroking with his right hand. The swan, its wings spread and its neck bent, lightly grazes her right breast with its beak. As tradition would have it, Zeus was taken with Leda and turned into a swan so he could make love to her on the banks of the river Eurotas. The unwitting woman concealed the swan under her mantle to protect it from the attack of an eagle and after their union she laid an egg from which Pollux and Helen were born.

In the past, this group was thought to be mostly modern, except for the head, considered an Imperial age portrait (Venturi 1893, p. 20; De Rinaldis 1935, p. 8; Calza 1957, p. 11, no. 82; Moreno 1980, p. 11). During the conservation carried out in 1996, part of the rock, the legs, the torso, a portion of drapery, the armilla on the left arm, the floral garland, the base of the vertical shaft planted in the right leg to support the swan as well as the latter’s left wing were all considered antique, as was the torso of the Erotes (Moreno 1997, pp. 76, 85–86).

The features are plausibly a portrait of Antonia Minor, daughter of the triumvir Mark Antony and Octavia, Augustus’s sister. In 17 BCE, Antonia married Drusus the Elder and had three children with him: Germanicus, Claudia Livia and the future emperor Claudius. The Borghese head, its surface soft and shaded, is set upon a slender neck. The face is triangular in shape with just the slightest hint of a double chin. The mouth is small, the lips pursed and the complexion of the cheeks delicate; the eyes are almond-shaped and the forehead narrow. The hair, rendered in soft locks, is parted down the middle, a ribbon holding it back from her forehead. The temples are concealed by a cluster of ringlets, the holes performed using a drill. At the back of the head, the craftsmanship is simpler, the strands barely outlined and fastened in a modern ring whence they fall down the back of her neck and onto her shoulders.

Karin Polaschek defined two series of replicas of portraits of Antonia, both datable to the late Tiberian era. One is simpler: the Einfacher Typus, in which the hair is parted at the centre of the head and fastened at the back in a loose knot tied with a ribbon, while below the central partition, the hair forms four distinct waves on each side. The second type, the Schäfenlöckchen Typus, differs from the first mainly in the treatment of the hair: two large curls cover the ribbon where it enters the hair, and smaller ringlets adorn the area between the temples and the ears. These two types appeared on the coins produced to commemorate Antonia Minor under the rule of her son Claudius (Polaschek 1973, pp. 25–30, pl. 9, 1; 10, 1; 14, 1).

Fittschen ascribes this portrait to the second type described by Polaschek, considering it a particular variant with a fillet. This author further identifies a particularly fitting comparison with two heads with the same subject preserved in the Museum of Schloss Erbach (Fittschen 1977, p. 61). Small postulates that the two long strands of hair on the side of the head, added during the adaptation of the group operated in the eighteenth century according to Polaschek, were in fact present in the antique. This scholar further identifies them as belonging to the broad spiral type, which was very common in the late Augustan era and up until Claudius’s reign (Small 1990, pp. 222–223).

As for the chronological setting of the Borghese group, it seems likely that the head belongs to the late-Tiberian era, when Antonia Minor was favoured by the Empire. The rest of the sculpture has undergone massive restorations and seems ascribable to the early third century CE.

Giulia Ciccarello