Leda and the Swan

Giovanni Rapiti

She was known as the Queen of Sparta, charmed by the Father of Gods and men disguised as a large water bird.

« Leda and the Swan is a story and subject in art from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus seduced, or raped, Leda in the form of a swan.

The subject undoubtedly owed its sixteenth-century popularity to the paradox that it was considered more acceptable to depict a woman in the act of copulation with a swan than with a man. The earliest depictions show the pair love-making with some explicitness—more so than in any depictions of a human pair made by artists of high quality in the same period.

The earliest known explicit Renaissance depiction is one of the many woodcut illustrations to Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a book published in Venice in 1499. This shows Leda and the Swan making love with gusto.»

More: Leda and the Swan at Wikipedia

[French School]

 Leon Reisener

Jacopo Pontormo

 Buonarroti Michelangelo

Emmanuel Benner

Bacchiacca

Giovanni Boldini

  Jerzy Hulewicz

 Joseph Stella

 [Lladro porcelain figurine]

 [attributed to] Luca Cambiasi

   Man Ray

Paolo Veronese

Leonardo da Vinci [detail]

François Edouard Picot

François Boucher

Michel Fingesten

Roger Grillon

Louis Jou

Paul Delvaux

Theodore Gericault

Paul Prosper Tillier

Marcel Bouraine

Leda and the Swan, poem by William Butler Yeats

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still            
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed            
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,            
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.             

How can those terrified vague fingers push            
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?            
And how can body, laid in that white rush,            
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?             

A shudder in the loins engenders there            
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower            
And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up,     
      
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,            
Did she put on his knowledge with his power            
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

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The following information may answer the question: their consummation resulted in 2 eggs from which hatched Helen (later known as the beautiful Helen of Troy), Clytemnestra, Castor, Pollux.

Pretty fine, thank you.

Palm Warbler

Totally charmed by bird painting, I just go with the flow, and keep an eye on bird painters. Etsy.com is usually one of the places I go first when browsing the Net looking for works of art. My latest (so sweet) discovery: FinchArts' nest.

« What is that draws poets to birds? And why have so many turned to them at critical points in their own writing? The collective nouns we all remember from childhood speak of language's innate fascination with all things avian: a murder of crows, a murmuration of starlings, a parliament of fowls. And it's no coincidence we afford them the most poetic collective nouns: right from the birth of literature birds have been present.

My theory is that birds provide a natural metaphor for the song all poets aspire to. We envy them their ease of expression, as their song provides a bridge into the mysteries of a world the animal in us fondly half-remembers.»

More: Why are poets so fascinated with birds?

 Eastern Phoebe

 Female Bluebird

 Blue Waxbill

 Bush Tit

 Black-Capped Chickadee

 Female Black-Throated Blue Warbler

 Blue Tit

 Bush Tit

 Chestnut-Backed Chickadee

 Chestnut-Backed Chickadee

 Chickadee

 Crested Tit

 Double Barred Finch

 Eastern Phoebe

 Long-Tailed Tit

 Palm Warbler

 Pine Warbler

 Robin

 Tiny Blue

 Tiny Sparrow

Tiny Sparrow

Finch is the arts + crafts business of Shauna Finn and James French, a crafty couple living in Jersey City, US, with their cat. Shauna is a figurative/realist painter and art instructor in Manhattan and New Jersey. James does all sorts of stuff from woodworking to painting. James is an artist and the Studio Art teacher at Elizabeth Irwin High School in the West Village.

They both teach art in Manhattan. In 2009 they opened their Etsy shop, featuring all of their bird-related arts + crafts.


Shauna's blog
web site
contact@shaunafinn.com


Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.
- Yevgeny Yevtushenko

In the wood

Two months ago, I bought a toaster. The ugly orange box containing the electric kitchen appliance is today useful for cutting balsa wood. Let me introduce you to my new series: hand embroidered miniature flowers, framed in coffee-flavored hand dyed wood.

Everybody likes flowers, right? I met someone who made me approach their design, pattern, shape… in a new unexpected way. Sucked into a charming swirl, my hands started to draw (with a needle and sewing thread) undiscovered flowers on small pieces of felt.

Now a frame? A handmade one-of-a-kind miniature wood frame for the new delicate embroideries! That's a lovely idea. He took me to a wood store (mmm, smells so good!) and we found the supplies I was looking for: glue, balsa.

The balsa wood tree, scientifically named Ochroma lagopus, grows best under conditions found in rain forests, ideally in mountainous terrain between rivers. Balsa is one of the lightest varieties of wood and it's remarkably strong for its weight. It could be carved easily with standard woodworking tools.

On the ugly orange toaster-box-cutting-board, while the wood is still very pale, my roommate's hands are busy slicing the balsa sticks-stacks before their night bath…

…into strong instant coffee.

Flower, wood, x-acto knife, beside a cool op-art dinosaur ruler.

Mini clamps are pretty cheap: 6 for $1,99. While the glue dries, they are very handy to keep the woodwork in place.

After other mucho appreciated advices, the frame is now a little bit larger. To give breath to the flower.

Some of them are listed in my Etsy shop.

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From the manner in which a woman draws her thread at every stitch of her needlework, any other woman can surmise her thoughts. -Honoré de Balzac

Patiently and repetitively hand embroidering this pretty flower pattern keeps me away from the Ocean of all the dangers.

Thank you for your interest in my work.