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

Abstract

fascination with depicting flora in fidelity to nature served to enhance the settings of many of his paintings. In addition, his plant studies can be evaluated as specimen pictures of botanical verisimilitude and, equally important, as integral works of art. Traditionally, flowers, plants and trees all were adjunct, supportive motifs in Christian historiated art and were considered important primarily for their symbolic meaning. This is quite unlike Roman art, where they appeared as subject matter, often without accompanying figures. Most of Leonardo's drawings of plants as sole subjects were preparatory studies for his figure paintings, one extant exception being a study for his never-completed Treatise on Botany [2]. The formal and compositional integrity of his plant