Leda and the Swan (Michelangelo) to spend in hiding. It was a square work in tempera, representing Jupiter as a swan making love to a reclining Leda (based on a composition from ancient Roman gems and seals), an egg and Castor and Pollux as children. It was completed by mid-October 1530 but Alfonso described it as a "little thing" in Michelangelo's hearing and so he refused to hand it over. The work and some of the preparatory drawings were in fact acquired (either as a purchase or a gift) by Antonio Mini, who took it to France in 1531. In 1532 he left it to
Castor and Pollux of Tyndareus alone, but they were sons of Zeus in the Hesiodic "Catalogue" (fr. 24 M-W). The conventional account (attested first in Pindar, Nemean 10) combined these paternities so that only Pollux was fathered by Zeus, while Leda and her husband Tyndareus conceived Castor. This explains why they were granted an alternate immortality. It is a common belief that one would live among the gods, while the other was among the dead. The figure of Tyndareus may have entered their tradition to explain their archaic name "Tindaridai" in Spartan inscriptions, or "Tyndaridai" in literature, in turn occasioning incompatible accounts of