If the subject that takes its name from Leda be, as Mengs says, rather an allegory than a fable, it alludes to what would aggravate even the story of that mistress of Jupiter. The central figure represents a female seated on the verge of a rivulet with a swan between her thighs, who attempts to insinuate his bill into her lips; but at her side, and deeper in the water, is a tender girl, who with an air of innocence playfully struggles to defend herself from the attacks of another swimming swan; farther on, a girl more grown up to woman, gazes, whilst a female servant dresses her, with an air of satiate pleasure after a swan on the wing, that seems just to have left her; at some distance appears half a figure of an aged woman, draped, and with looks of regret. On the other side of the principal group, the graceful form of a full-grown Amor strikes the lyre, and two Amorini contrive to wind some horn instruments. The scene of all this is a charming grove on the brink of a pellucid lake. The second picture represents the daughter of Acrisius, but with poetic spirit. The virgin gracefully reclines on her bed; a full-grown Cupid, perhaps a Hymen, lifts with one hand the border of the sheet on her lap that receives the celestial shower, whilst his other presents the mystic drops to her enchanted glance: two Amorini at the foot of the bed try on a touchstone, that, one of the golden drops, this, the point of an arrow, and he, says Mengs, has a vigour of character much superior to the other, plainly to express, that Love proceeds from the arrow, and its ruin from gold; he likewise finds that the head and head-dress of Danae are imitated from those of the Medicean Venus.