Leda with the Swan
by CORREGGIO, Oil on canvas, 152 x 191 cm
Leda is playing in the stream with her maidens, and receives the embrace of the swan-god. Beautiful as the treatment is, it is decidedly voluptuous, and so incensed the pious zeal of Louis, son of the Regent at Paris, that he attacked it with a knife and cut off Leda’s head. The present head therefore is not Correggio’s but a restoration by Schlesingen.