Giuseppe Piamontini began his career as a sculptor in the studio of the Florentine workshop of Giovanni Battista Foggini, the maker of the pietra dura jewelry box displayed in this gallery. Piamontini worked with Foggini on a number of commissions for Florentine churches during the 1680s and 1690s, several years before he created these two mythological figural groups. The subjects of Leda and the Swan and Ganymede and the Eagle were taken from the ancient Roman writer Ovid's Metamorphosis. Piamontini's bronzes thus display an interest in classical subjects and convey a sense of movement, both traits of baroque sculpture.