A newly discovered mural shows Leda having sex with a swan. Photo: Parco Archeologico di Pompei
Posted on 11/27/2018 11:43:26 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Archaeologists have unearthed a sensual fresco depicting the Ancient Greek myth of Leda and the Swan on a bedroom wall in Pompeii.
While the story might not appeal to modern sensibilities, the legend that Leda, the beautiful queen of Sparta, was seduced – or raped, depending on how you see it – by the king of the gods disguised as a swan was apparently a titillating subject for Ancient Romans.
In an astonishingly well preserved fresco revealed to the public this week, the moment is depicted as a non-violent encounter: Leda reclines languidly, gazing directly at the viewer, as the swan perches between her parted legs.
The coupling, which would result in the birth of Helen of Troy and thus the Trojan War and all its consequences (including, many centuries later, the founding of Rome by Trojan refugees), has inspired artists and poets throughout the ages. Michelangelo's strikingly sensual version, now lost but surviving in copies, is said to have drawn on Roman depictions similar to the one just discovered.
The mural was brought to light in a house along the Via del Vesuvio in the Regio V section of Pompeii, an area that has yielded some of the doomed city's most exciting new discoveries in decades since archaeologists began excavating it earlier this year.
One recent find, uncovered in the same house as the Leda fresco, showed the ancient fertility god Priapus weighing his oversized penis on a scale.
Unlike the better preserved Leda fresco, however, the Priapus painting was placed in an entrance corridor, suggesting that it was intended as a public symbol of good fortune – Romans considered the phallus a kind of charm against the evil eye – rather than for personal enjoyment.
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.it ...
A newly discovered mural shows Leda having sex with a swan. Photo: Parco Archeologico di Pompei
Hey, quit swanning about! Maybe she was only
comforting it?
It is an amazing fresco.
What are you doing? said Ramsey.
Making him tender....
If only the goose knew...
Hard to say what the symbolism of swans were. In northern legends ‘the seven swans’ were about a girl’s seven brothers being turned into swans and she had to save them by doing something, I forget what. Then there is the northern swan constellation in the Milky Way.
(second try)
I wonder in which wing of the house it was found?
It would be another 1500 years before the realism of art began anew.................
It was on a bedroom wall...
When you do it wth a swan, how is the bill paid?
Makes sense that God destroyed this place, literally with fire and brimstone.
You just have to wing it.
I’d feather not go into detail.
By modern standards (apart from male and female teenegers’ bedroom wall posters), Romans’ taste often was in their mouths. :^)
I wouldn't call it rape-rape.
*Who told you about my swan?!?* ;^)
She doesn’t look very happy about it. Are women into waterfowl that much?
That’s nothing compared to the fresco we saw at the House of the Vettii in Pompei
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pompeii_Priapus_2.jpg
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