32 A Pen-Drawing of Leda (1892)
Michael Field
“A Pen-Drawing of Leda” by Michael Field was first published in Field’s 1892 collection Sight and Song, which is available from Google Books. The poem is in the public domain.
The editorial notes are available under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Unless otherwise attributed, they were written by Dr. Kylee-Anne Hingston at the University of Saskatchewan.
Fig. 4 is in the public domain.
A Pen-Drawing of Leda[1]
SODOMA[3]
The Grand Duke’s Palace at Weimar
’TIS Leda lovely, wild and free,
Drawing her gracious Swan down through the grass to see
Certain round eggs without a speck:
One hand plunged in the reeds and one dinting the downy neck,
5
Although his hectoring bill
Gapes toward her tresses,
She draws the fondled creature to her will.
She joys to bend in the live light
Her glistening body toward her love, how much more bright!
10
Though on her breast the sunshine lies
And spreads its affluence on the wide curves of her waist and thighs,
To her meek, smitten gaze
Where her hand presses
The Swan’s white neck sink Heaven’s concentrated rays.
Works Cited
Bodmer, Heinrich. Leonardo: Des Meisters Gemälde Und Ziechnungen In 360 Abbildungen [Leonardo: The Master’s Paintings and Drawings in 360 Illustrations]. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1931. Google Books, books.google.ca/books?id=mrInAAAAMAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
Field, Michael. “A Pen-Drawing of Leda.” Sight and Song, E. Mathews and J. Lane, 1892, p. 81. Google Books, www.google.ca/books/edition/Sight_and_Song/N3GXtQdGZ88C.
Kwakkelstein, Michael. “Leda en de Zwann.” Entry Bestandscatalogus Italiaanse Tekeningen 1400-1600 [Entry File Catalogue Italian Drawings 1400-1600], Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, www.boijmans.nl/collectie/kunstwerken/58865.
“Il Sodoma.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Apr. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Il_Sodoma&oldid=1220508874.
“Leda and the Swan (Leonardo).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 July 2023, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Leda_and_the_Swan_(Leonardo)&oldid=1163404466.
Sodoma, Il. Leda and the Swan (copy of Leonardo da Vinci). 1510–1515. WikiArt, www.wikiart.org/en/il-sodoma/leda-and-the-swan-copy-of-leonardo-da-vinci-1515.
- Between 1503 and 1507, Leonardo da Vinci prepared to paint Leda and the Swan. The original painting has since been lost and only three of Leonardo’s sketches survived (“Leda and the Swan (Leonardo)”). One of the drawings was part of the Grand Ducal Collection in Weimar when this poem was written and published (Bodomer 329, 417; Kwakkelstein). See fig. 4. –E.Z. ↵
- Michael Field is the pen name for Katharine Harris Bradley (1846–1914) and Edith Emma Cooper (1862–1913). ↵
- The painter Giovani Antonio Bazzi (1477–1549) was nicknamed Il Sodoma, Italian for “the sodomite,” in an art history book written by one of his contemporaries (“Il Sodoma”). In Field’s time, art historians attributed Leonardo da Vinci’s pen drawing of Leda to Sodoma (Bodmer 417). While Sodoma did not, in fact, make the drawing referenced in Field’s poem, he did paint his own version of Leda and the Swan. –E.Z. ↵
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