Leda and the Swan (Léda au cygne)

Leda and the Swan (Léda au cygne), painted around 1880 and now in Philadelphia's Barnes Foundation, depicts the Greek myth in which Zeus transforms into a swan and seduces — or, in many readings, assaults — Leda, queen of Sparta. Cézanne approached mythological subjects with the same analytical detachment he brought to portraits and landscapes, the nude female figure and the swan offering formal rather than narrative interest. The Barnes Foundation, assembled by Albert C. Barnes as a collection organized around formal aesthetic principles, is an appropriate home for Cézanne's mythologically titled formal study. The myth's erotic charge is characteristically subordinated to pictorial investigation.

Oil on canvas treating the mythological scene primarily as a composition of interlocking curved forms — the woman's reclining body and the swan's arched neck creating a dynamic formal relationship. Cézanne's characteristic parallel brushwork builds up the flesh tones and the swan's feathers through the same methodical faceting process he applied to all his subjects.