Two alabaster statuettes from the Kunstkammer.

At around the time our two alabaster statuettes were carved, Correggio and Benvenuto Cellini also focused on these divine love affairs. Correggio painted his celebrated series for Federico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua in 1530, and these four paintings depict loves of Zeus/Jupiter: Ganymede and the eagle (now in the Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna), and Leda and the Swan (Berlin, Staatliche Museen), as well as Danae and the Golden Rain (Rome, Galleria Borghese), and Jupiter and Io (also in the Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna).
Around 1540, Cellini depicted Leda and Ganymede on the base of a now lost silver candelabra in the shape of Jupiter commissioned by the King of France.²
Composition and handling of the two alabaster statuettes reveal them to be companion pieces. Until now, only Leo Planiscig had written about this Ganymede, and he, too, identified the two artefacts as a pair.³ But as they took very different paths to enter the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna they have never been displayed together.
Ganymede has now been expertly restored in the Conservation Dept. of the Kunstkammer Vienna (see the essay by Theresa Lamers), which is why both statuettes are now on show side by side – perhaps for the first time ever or at least for the first time in centuries.

The similarities are striking. The mirror-image compositions of these pairings of human and bird both place the smaller avian protagonist on a rock overgrown with plants (the eagle’s base also features a snake and a lizard), allowing it to converse more or less eye-to-eye with the larger human figure. Touch and gaze play a seminal role in the subtle, carefully differentiated rendering of both love stories. There is much tenderness between the pair comprising swan and woman. The sculptor has focused on the lovers’ desire, capturing a moment of erotic tension. Their caresses are still timid and shy – Leda is using only the tips of her fingers to touch neck and wing of her feathered paramour, while his chest almost accidentally brushes against her thigh. But their eyes are locked, and both have cocked their heads, which, together with their direct gaze, suggests a tentative invitation. Here, the loving union is but a heartbeat away. We can easily imagine that soon their caresses will become more passionate…. How much more reserved, in contrast, is the encounter between eagle and youth, between Zeus and Ganymede. We do not have to agree with Planiscig who believed the eagle had grabbed hold of the boy and was hitting him. Instead, we could read the way the powerful bird of prey has placed its wing on the youth’s back and its leg on his thigh as a fatherly or at least a friendly gesture. But the stern look the „King of Birds” is giving his young companion does remind one of a teacher sizing up one of his more unruly pupils. The latter seems to resist: although Ganymede’s body is shown in a more or less relaxed contrapposto, his pose appears stiff, unnatural and uncomfortable. This impression is mainly caused by the angular position of his raised right arm, which suggests he is not very happy touching the bird’s neck. Here, too, the two protagonists are cocking their heads but their eyes do not seem to meet. The youth’s features suggest instead he is trying to avoid the raptor’s gaze. But as Ganymede’s eyes do not have pupils, we cannot determine the direction of his gaze; he may be casting a – then highly skeptical – sidelong glance at the eagle. His half-opened mouth with its thick lips also makes the boy appear annoyed. In his left hand he is clutching some fruit to feed to the bird but this Ganymede does not appear to feel at ease. Despite the youth’s beauty, the composition lacks eroticism. This, by the way, is also not emphasised in the original version of this myth (Homer, Iliad); it appears to be a later addition first found in versions dating from after the death of Homer.⁴ However, we do not know if the author of our alabaster statuette was aware of this. In any case, the contrived juxtapositioning of the figures makes it quite clear that Ganymede did not want to be abducted to Mount Olympus. With Leda, Zeus seems to have almost succeeded in seducing her, but Ganymede looks as if he still needs a lot of convincing.
Style and handling of the two groups have much in common. Note the similarities in the rendering of the birds’ plumage. Individual, oblong bundles of feathers are generously arranged in rows next to each other or overlapping like scales. Interestingly, only the swan’s wings and legs are covered with feathers, its body and neck remain smooth and thus similar to Leda’s body. The handling of the bodies of the two human protagonists is extremely soft. Compared to the rest of her body, Leda’s arms and legs appear heavy and massive yet soft. Thighs, hips, chest and arms almost doughy. Her right hip juts forward into space. The same with Ganymede. His chest appears almost as soft as a girl’s. Muscles are merely intimated on his torso. The faces of both human protagonists feature large, cat-like eyes with strongly emphasized upper and lower lids. Planiscig attributed the Ganymede-group to a “Florentine artist in the direction of Sansovino between 1530 and 1540”,⁵ which we can now more or less confirm. Jacopo Sansovino conceived the base of his statuette of John the Baptist in Santa Maria dei Frari in Venice (1534) as a rock overgrown with plants, and the Baptist’s dreamy face with its cat-like eyes and thick lips may have informed the work of the artist who produced our two groups. However, the choice of alabaster suggests it originated in Tuscany rather than in Venice.
So, are these two statuettes true counterparts, produced to be displayed together? Or do they merely represent independent templates successfully repeated by a workshop? The mirror-image arrangement of the human and avian protagonists – the swan is on Leda’s right, the eagle on Ganymede’s left – rather suggests the former, though a trawl though the inventories has not revealed any connection. If they are a pair they must have been separated at an early date. The statuette of Leda and the swan is first listed in the inventory of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s Kunstkammer compiled in 1659: “No 115. A nude Leda in full-length pose made of white marble, clasping the swan with both hands. Antico. Exactly 2 span high” (“No. 115. Ein nackhendte Leda gantzer Postur von weissen Marmel, welche mit beeden Händten ein Schwanen halt. Antico. Hoch 2 Span genaw”).⁶ There can be no doubt that this entry refers to object KK 4382. The description of Leda embracing the swan with both hands is as correct as the recorded height “2 span”; a span equals 20.8 cm, and our alabaster statuette measures 43 cm. The recorded material “Marmel” (marble) may surprise at first, but in old inventories alabaster is often mistaken for or identified as marble. In the 1659 inventory, the term “Antico” is always used to describe a non-contemporary work (“Moderno”).
Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, Regent of the Spanish Netherlands from 1647 to 1656, bought up a number of paintings and statuettes when the collections assembled by King Charles I were auctioned off in Antwerp after his execution following the end of the English Civil War. Many of them he had, in turn, acquired when the Gonzaga collections in Mantua were sold in 1628. Several statuettes formerly in the Archduke’s Kunstkammer can be identified among the works listed in the Mantuan inventory.⁷ This is why it was long assumed that our Leda, too, originated there – the inventory compiled after the death of Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua and one of the greatest collectors and patrons of her time, lists no less than two marble statuettes of Leda, which were displayed on the ledges of her grotto.⁸ Ultimately, however, these descriptions are too vague to identify our statuette with certainty. If our alabaster group really was in Mantua, it was shown without a Ganymede in the Marchioness’s grotto, because no Ganymede is listed in the 1540-1542 inventory. If our statuettes were, in fact, conceived as a pair in the sense of corresponding counterparts, they were already separated at this early point in their history. It therefore seems more plausible to assume another, earlier provenance before the entry in the 1659 inventory of Leopold Wilhelm’s collection, but we cannot (yet) prove that.
The Ganymede group only came to Vienna two centuries later, and it took a very different route – it really did come from Northern Italy. It was moved from the Este Collection in Catajo to Vienna in 1896 but was only listed in the inventory of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna in 1923. So far, we have not been able to reconstruct an earlier provenance, i.e. before 1896.
Although they clearly complement each other in material, handling and composition, the statuettes have been separated at least since 1659. We do not (yet) have answers to any of the important questions regarding their production. However, their joint presentation in the Kunstkammer of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna reunites them for the first time.