Leda and the Swan - Part 2
Added 2025-06-14 23:00:07 +0000 UTCThe historian Procopius claims, in his Secret History, that the Roman Empress Theodora acted in a reproduction of this particular myth at some point in her youth in the early sixth century CE prior to her becoming the empress. This account is heavily disputed for the biases Roman aristocrats including Procopius had towards the role of women and the reputation of actresses and sex workers at the time.
The subject undoubtedly owed its 16th-century popularity to the paradox that it was considered more acceptable to depict a woman in the act of copulation with a swan than with a man. The earliest depictions show the pair love-making with some explicitness—more so than in any depictions of a human pair made by artists of high quality in the same period.
Photographer Dave Levingston.
