I will shortly be re-uploading a post on Italian artist Giovanni Boldini, over on Venus Observations. In the meantime, here is his version of Leda and the Swan.
The Greek legend of Leda and the Swan,
has the God Zeus, in the form of a swan seducing (or raping, depending on the
version), Leda, the daughter of the King of Aetolia. Obviously not too
traumatised by the event that night she also had sex with her husband and in
due course gave birth to two eggs which produced Helen (of Troy) and Clytemnestra from one egg, and Castor and Pollux from the other.
The subject has enabled artists for
centuries to produce images of ecstatic looking women in copulatory poses while
claiming that they are just illustrating an acceptable classical subject.
Boldini's version is certainly at the more explicit end of the scale,
with the swan between Leda's legs, its feet grasping her thighs as it presses
its nether regions into her groin while she looks appropriately overcome.
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