Castor and Pollux Castor and Pollux Castor and Pollux (or in Greek, Polydeuces) were twin half-brothers in Greek and Roman mythology, known together as the Dioscuri. Their mother was Leda, but they had different fathers; Castor was the mortal son of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, while Pollux was the divine son of Zeus, who seduced Leda in the guise of a swan. Though accounts of their birth are varied, they are sometimes said to have been born from an egg, along with their twin sisters Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. In Latin the twins are also known as the Gemini (literally "twins")
Leda and the Swan (Correggio) and extraordinary balance between naturalist rendering and poetic transfiguration. Correggio had made a study of Michelangelo's "Leda and the Swan". According to Vasari's "Lives of the Artists", the "Leda" and a "Venus" (i.e. "Danaë") were commissioned by Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua as a gift for Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. This is supported by the theory that Jupiter was flying out of the right hand side of "Leda" in swan form and into the left hand side of "Danaë" in golden-shower form. However, one more recent study suggests that all the paintings in the "amori di Giove" series