The cover art to "Vespertine" [...] explores the theme of personal identity through visual means: hence Björk is featured in black and white, shading her eyes, lips slightly parted in an unmistakably erotic pose. For the first time in this context, however, she does not meet the viewer's gaze directly. Instead, the superimposed image of a swan provides a protective shield between Björk and the viewer. Both this photograph and Björk's subsequent appearances at promotional events dressed as a swan metonymically evokes not only the mythic figure of Leda, but more particularly the familiar legend in which she exchanges her husband, the Spartan king Tyndareus, for the God Zeus when he approaches her in disguised form. As in other visual representations of this myth, the entwined bodies of Leda and the swan permit a representation of erotic intimacy that would prove unacceptable if realised in a more literal fashion.