Botany and Art in Leonardo's "Leda and the Swan"

Leonardo da Vinci was evidently interested in the theme of Leda and the swan. There was a documented cartoon for a projected painting of the subject, and several extant contemporary copies purportedly reflect it. He executed preparatory studies not only for the figures but also for a variety of marsh, field and woodland wild flowers. These plant studies are remarkable botanical documents, evincing a precise rendering based on a close examination of nature, rather than the traditional flattened forms found in herbals of the period. His studies are unique for a time in which no scientific classification system as yet had been developed for plants, which generally were studied for either their symbolic or medicinal properties, not for their botanical ones. The authors evaluate five of Leonardo's plant studies, which they assume were intended for the "Leda," to determine their accuracy with regard to botanical detail and comparative scale of the component parts, as well as their artistic qualities. The studies are compared with descriptions in modern manuals of flora and with the plants as they appear today in nature. The authors then examine the preparatory drawings and the copies to see if and when the plant studies were utilized by Leonardo and other artists who followed him.