Leda and the Swan (Michelangelo) Francis I of France, who later sent it to the Palace of Fontainebleau. The best known copy is attributed to Rosso Fiorentino and hangs in the National Gallery in London, with others in the Gemäldegalerie (Dresden), the Gemäldegalerie (Berlin) and the Correr Museum in Venice. The Casa Buonarroti in Florence holds not only a copy but also a preparatory drawing of Leda's head, held to be by Michelangelo himself. There are also several prints of the work, the most faithful of which is thought to be the one by Nicolas Béatrizet, which also shows Castor and Pollux. Leda and the
Leda and the Swan many versions of the story, Zeus took the form of a swan and seduced Leda on the same night she slept with her husband King Tyndareus. In some versions, she laid two eggs from which the children hatched. In other versions, Helen is a daughter of Nemesis, the goddess who personified the disaster that awaited those suffering from the pride of Hubris. The subject was rarely seen in the large-scale sculpture of antiquity, although a representation of Leda in sculpture has been attributed in modern times to Timotheus ("compare illustration, below left"); small-scale sculptures survive showing both reclining and standing