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Apollo and Daphne

Birth of the Laurel Tree

In the Galleria Borghese in Rome stands a statue by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 – 1680) that is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of marble sculpture in the Western world. Executed from 1622 to 1625, Bernini captured the moment Daphne escapes Apollo and transforms into a laurel tree. Her fingers are already becoming laurel leaves, her skin already becoming bark. Apollo has caught her at the exact instant she escapes him forever. Bernini is transforming cold stone into something that seems to breathe, to move, to cry out.

Crucially, in the story of Apollo and Daphne neither of the two central figures acts entirely by free will. Both Apollo and Daphne are moved by forces beyond themselves — arrows loosed in revenge by the child-god Cupid — and yet the consequences fall almost entirely upon Daphne. This tension gives the myth a startling relevance to our own age, resonating powerfully with the questions raised by the #MeToo movement: Who is responsible when power is abused? What does consent mean when one party is overwhelmed by forces they did not choose?

Daphne and Apollo (c.1636), Cornelis de Vos (Flemish, c.1584 – 1651), Oil on canvas, 207x193cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

In the first book of his Metamorphoses, composed in the first century AD, the Roman poet Ovid tells the tale of Apollo and Daphne. The story unfolds in six movements, each preserved in Ovid’s verse, and each illustrated by painters, sculptors, and illuminators. Let us follow it from beginning to end:

Apollo kills Python
The dispute between Apollo and Cupid
Cupid’s revenge: the two arrows and Apollo goes after Daphne
Daphne begs her father for help
Daphne turns into a Laurel Tree
The Evergreen Tree and the Laurel Wreath

1. Apollo kills Python

The story begins not with love but with slaughter. Apollo killed Python, the great snake that terrorized mankind. As an allegory, Python represents the fogs and clouds of mist that arise from ponds and marshes, and evaporate when the rays of the sun appear — Apollo being the sun-god, and his arrows the rays of sunshine.

Apollo kills Python (1589), From the series ‘Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, Engraving after design by Hendrick Goltzius (Dutch, 1558 – 1617), 18x25cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The archer god, with lethal shafts that he had only used before on fleeing deer, destroyed the creature with a thousand arrows, almost emptying his quiver, the venom running out from Python's black wounds.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (643-648)

Apollo, Python and Cupid (c.1636), Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577 – 1640), Oil on panel sketch, 27x42cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

2. The dispute between Apollo and Cupid

Flushed with triumph, Apollo encounters Cupid — the small, winged god of love. Apollo, in his pride, cannot resist mockery. Why, Apollo demands, does this little boy need weapons suited for war? The bow belongs to mighty gods like himself, to those who hunt and fight and conquer monsters. Let Cupid content himself with his love-torch and leave glory to those who have earned it.

Apollo and Python, and the dispute with Cupid (c.1650), Jan Boeckhorst (Flemish, 1604 – 1668), Sketch or modello for a tapestry, Oil on canvas, 60x51cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium.

Cupid’s reply is dangerously calm. Your arrow may pierce all things, he tells Apollo, but my arrow will pierce you.

Apollo, proud of his recent conquest of the snake, saw Cupid flexing his bow, pulling back the string, and said to him: Boy, what are you doing with strong weapons? Those arrows and bow are fitting for my shoulders — I who can shoot wild beasts and never miss, and wound my enemies, I who with my countless arrows has just killed that Python. You, be satisfied to stir up some love affair with your torch, and do not lay claim to my praises!

Cupid then replied to him: Oh Apollo, your arrow may strike all things, but mine can strike at you.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (665-677)

The Dispute between Apollo and Cupid (c.1812), José de Madrazo y Agudo (Spanish, 1781 – 1859), Pencil on paper, 22x29cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

Here is a divine comedy playing out with tragic consequences for a mortal — or rather, for a nymph. Apollo’s arrogance triggers Cupid’s revenge, and that revenge will be visited not merely on Apollo himself, but on an entirely innocent third party: Daphne, daughter of the river god Peneus, who has never wronged either of them and is simply going about her life in the forests she loves.

3. Cupid’s revenge: the two arrows and Apollo goes after Daphne

Ovid then describes Cupid’s vengeance with great precision. He tells us that the little god flies to the top of Mount Parnassus and takes two arrows — arrows of entirely opposite powers. The first is golden with a razor-sharp head: it kindles love. The second is blunt-tipped, leaded: it repels love and makes its victim flee from even the name of it. He shoots the golden one at Apollo and the leaden one at Daphne.

Daphne and Apollo, and Cupid (c.1617), Francesco Albani (Italian, 1578 – 1660), Oil on copper, 18x36cm, Louvre, Paris.

Apollo sees Daphne and is immediately consumed by burning love. Daphne is equally consumed by burning aversion, running from the very idea of love. Both are robbed of choice. Both are puppets of a Cupid’s arrows and revenge. Yet it is Daphne who pays the higher price.

Cupid pulled out two arrows, each with a different force. The arrow which arouses love is gold with a sharp, glittering head, while the arrow which inhibits love is blunt and has lead below the shaft. With this second arrow Cupid hit Daphne, the daughter of Peneus, but with the first he struck Apollo’s bones, piercing right through them, into the marrow.

Apollo is immediately in love, but she runs away, swifter than a soft breeze, and does not stop when he calls her. With increasing speed, he chases after her. That’s how the god and virgin race away, he driven on by hope and she by fear. Daphne grows pale as her strength fails, exhausted by the strain of running away so fast.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (680-801)

4. Daphne begs her father for help

With Apollo almost upon her, Daphne turns to the one source of help available. She calls on her father, the river god Peneus, whose waters flow through the valley. It is a cry for transformation, for escape from the body that has become a trap:

Gazing at the waters of Peneus, she cries out: 'Father, help me! If your streams have heavenly power, change me! Destroy my beauty which has brought too much delight!'


Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (803-805)

Daphne and Apollo, and Daphne’s father Peneus (c.1757), Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Venetian, 1696 – 1770), Oil on canvas, 69x87cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Daphne does not ask to be saved so that she can go on living as herself. She asks to be unmade. She asks for her beauty — the very quality that drew both Cupid’s arrow and Apollo’s eye — to be destroyed. In a world where she cannot control the effect her appearance has on those around her, the only freedom available is to stop being what she is. Her father Peneus, the great river God, complies. And the transformation begins.

Daphne and Apollo, and Daphne’s father Peneus (c.1545), Italian maiolica plate, Tin glazed eartheware, Diameter 27cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

5. Daphne turns into a Laurel Tree

Then Ovid gets to the core of the story, Daphne’s transformation. It happens mid-stride, at the moment Apollo’s hands almost reach her:

Scarcely has she made this plea, when she feels a heavy numbness move across her limbs, her soft breasts are enclosed by slender bark, her hair is changed to leaves, her arms to branches, her feet, so swift a moment before, stick fast in sluggish roots, a covering of foliage spreads across her face. All that remains of her is her shining beauty.


Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (806-810)

Daphne and Apollo (c.1475), Piero Pollaiuolo (Italian, c.1441 – c.1496), Oil on panel, 30x20cm, National Gallery, London.

The transformation is complete — and yet not complete, for what persists is beauty itself. Daphne has changed form, but not vanished. And Apollo, reaching the tree, still reaches for her:

Apollo loved her in this form, as well. He placed his hand on her trunk, where he felt her heart still beating under the new bark. He hugged the branches as though they were still human limbs and he kissed the wood.


Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (813-818)

Daphne and Apollo (c.1668), Jan Boeckhorst (German, c.1604 – 1668), Sketch or modello for a tapestry, Watercolor, 22x23cm, Getty Center, Los Angeles.

Apollo’s love does not end with the transformation. The god who could not accept refusal from a living woman, now declares his love for a tree:

Apollo spoke: 'Since you cannot be my bride, you will certainly be my tree. My hair will always be decorated with your leaves. You will accompany the Roman emperors, when joyful voices acclaim their triumph. And just as my head with its golden hair is always young, so you also will wear the beauty of evergreen leaves.'


Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (820-831)

At the heart of Apollo’s speech is a promise: as his hair is always young — as the god of light — so the laurel will bear the beauty of evergreen leaves throughout winter. This is the mythological explanation for a natural fact: the laurel (Laurus nobilis) is indeed an evergreen, its aromatic leaves glossy and dark throughout the year. In the ancient world, evergreens were associated with immortality, with the persistence of life beyond ordinary death. The laurel thus became the perfect symbol of Apollo — the god of undying light, the sun that does not permanently fail even in midwinter.

Daphne and Apollo (1622), Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Italian, 1598 – 1680), Marble, height 243cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome.
And here you can watch the great video on Bernini’s Daphne and Apollo by the Khan Academy (Smarthistory), presented by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker.

Apollo turns his loss into an enduring program, although it is quite a self-glorifying solution. Daphne will adorn Apollo’s hair and his lyre. Daphne will stand at the doors of emperors. Daphne will crown the victorious and the powerful. Apollo claims her, even in her transformation — even in what was meant to be her escape.

6. The Evergreen Tree and the Laurel Wreath

The story ends when the laurel tree bends its new branches, in what Ovid calls a nod — a tree’s equivalent of consent, as Apollo certainly will understand it.

The laurel bowed her newly made branches, nodding in agreement, and seemed to shake her leafy crown like a head giving consent.


Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (832-833)

But perhaps it was only the wind that moved the leaves?

The final image of Ovid’s story is the laurel bowing its branches — or seeming to. Daphne, who asked to be unmade, who prayed for her own transformation, has become permanent. She is the tree that does not die. She is in Apollo’s hair and she is on the heads of emperors and generals. She is in the hand of every poet and laureate who ever received a wreath.

Julius Caesar (c.1675), from the Series of Roman Emperors, Engraving by André Vaillant (Dutch, 1655 – 1693), after a design by Titian (Venetian, c.1488 – 1576), with a poem by Geeraert Brandt (Dutch, 1626 – 1685), 22x16cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Every time you see a laurel wreath — in a painting, on a coin, at a graduation ceremony, above a doorway — you are seeing Daphne. The girl who ran. The nymph who asked to be dissolved and was instead immortalised. The body that fled possession and was possessed anyway, in a form that cannot speak, cannot run, cannot refuse.

Napoleon on the Throne (1806), Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (French, 1780 -1867), Oil on canvas, 163x260cm, Musée de l’Armée, Paris.

The myth is two thousand years old. The laurel is on every door. Daphne is everywhere.

The Twin Tipped Fred Perry Shirt (1952). The Fred Perry logo – a laurel wreath.

The laurel wreath, then, is not only a symbol of triumph. It is also a reminder — worn at every moment of victory, present at every crowning — that somewhere behind glory there may be a story of someone who ran, and who ran in vain.

National Gallery of Art acquires Anne Vallayer-Coster still life

Anne Vallayer-Coster (French, 1744 – 1818)

Still Life with Flowers in an Alabaster Vase and Fruit (1783)

The National Gallery of Art, Washington, has acquired an important painting by Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744–1818), Still Life with Flowers in an Alabaster Vase and Fruit (1783). One of the greatest still life painters of 18th-century France, Vallayer-Coster achieved remarkable success in the male-dominated art world of her time. She not only attracted the patronage of some of the most powerful collectors of the time, including Marie Antoinette, but she also became one of the few women to be admitted to the prestigious Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and to show her work at its official public exhibition, the Salon.

Portrait of Anne Vallayer-Coster (c.1770), Engraving by Charles Francois Le Tellier (French, 1743 – 1800), National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Still Life with Flowers in an Alabaster Vase and Fruit is the first painting by Vallayer-Coster to enter the National Gallery’s collection. Despite the limited access to training and patronage, women artists achieved unprecedented professional opportunities and success in the latter half of the 18th century. Vallayer-Coster, alongside Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, is now the second woman artist represented in the National Gallery’s collection of 18th-century French paintings. This masterpiece not only fills out a more complete story of this pivotal period in European art history, but also highlights the accomplishments of one of its most significant artists.

Still Life with Flowers in an Alabaster Vase and Fruit (1783), Anne Vallayer-Coster (French, 1744 – 1818), 109x90cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

One of Vallayer-Coster’s most ambitious works, this painting showcases her unrivaled ability to capture the soft, delicate textures of flowers and to coordinate their dazzling colors and irregular shapes into a harmonious whole. When it was exhibited at the Salon of 1783, critics hailed Still Life with Flowers in an Alabaster Vase and Fruit as a masterpiece. Vallayer-Coster herself considered it her finest painting, and she kept it until her death. Lost for nearly 200 years, this extraordinary work was recently rediscovered in an almost pristine state of preservation: unlined, on its original stretcher, and in the Louis XVI frame in which it was likely exhibited.

Depicting an opulent bouquet brimming with meticulously studied and exquisitely rendered flowers, this work includes roses, irises, lilacs, carnations, hollyhocks, dahlias, bluebells, and hydrangeas, among others, that create a dazzling display of color against the rich, chocolate brown scumbling of the background. The flowers sit in an alabaster vase adorned with French gilt-bronze mounts, featuring a child satyr supporting a cornucopia of fruits and flowers. Resting on an elaborately carved and gilded mahogany table with a pale gray marble top, the vase and flowers are completed by a bunch of white grapes, a pineapple, and three peaches. Evoking the cool polish of marble and alabaster, the glistening surface of cast-bronze, the translucency of grapes, the spiky form of a pineapple, the velvety skin of peaches, and the delicate freshness of flower petals, the painting epitomizes Vallayer-Coster’s extraordinary skill in portraying colors and textures.

Jael, Judith, David and Samson. True Heroes!

Jael, Samson, Judith and David are heroes from the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament who risked their own lives to save their people from the enemy. They are unlikely but true heroes, charming, clever and cunning, and in the case of Samson fighting with physical strength. Paintings with these true heroes had often a political or moralising message. Their stories were associated with the underdog defeating an oppressor; a small country fighting victoriously against the big enemy. The four are commonly depicted as follows: Jael holds the hammer and peg with which she killed Sisera (Judges 4:17-23), Judith displays the head of Holofernes and holds the sword with which she decapitated him (Judith 13:6-10), David leans on the gigantic sword with which he cut off the head of Goliath (I Sam.17: 51), and finally Samson who holds the jawbone with which he slew a thousand Philistines (Judges 15:15-20).

_{Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian, 1593 – 1654), Jael and Sisera (1620), 93×128cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.}

The topic of the canvas is the moment in which Jael is about to kill Sisera, a general of the enemy. Jael welcomed Sisera into her tent and covered him with a blanket. Sisera asked Jael for a drink of water; she gave him milk instead and comforted him so that he fell asleep in her lap. Quietly, Jael took a hammer and drove a tent peg through Sisera’s skull while he was sleeping, killing him instantly. Jael was the woman with the honour of defeating the enemy and their army.

_{Andrea Mantegna (Italian, c.1431 – 1506), Judith with the Head of Holofernes (c.1497), Tempera on Panel, 30x18cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.}

Besieged by the Assyrians, the beautiful Israelite widow Judith went into the enemy camp of Holofernes to win his confidence. During a great banquet Holofernes became drunk, and later in his tent Judith seized his sword and cut off his head. Often an elderly female servant is depicted taking away the head in a bag or basket. Look at the Mantegna painting, you can see Holofernes on the bed, just by way of one of his feet! Their leader gone; the enemy was soon defeated by the Israelites. This ancient heroine was understood in the Renaissance as a symbol of civic virtue, of intolerance of tyranny, and of a just cause triumphing over evil. The story of Judith and Holofernes comes from the “Book of Judith”, a text that’s part of the Old Testament of the Catholic Bible. The Book of Judith is excluded from the Hebrew and Protestant Bible, but still considered an important additional historical text.

_{Donatello or Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (Italian, c.1386 – 1466), David (c.1440), bronze, 158cm, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, Italy.}

This is the story of the Israelite boy David and the Philistine giant Goliath. The Israelites are fighting the Philistines, whose champion – Goliath – repeatedly offers to meet the Israelites’ best warrior in single combat to decide the whole battle. None of the trained Israelite soldiers is brave enough to fight Goliath, until David – a shepherd boy who is too young to be a soldier – accepts the challenge. The Israelite leader offers David armor and weapons, but the boy is untrained and refuses them. Instead, he goes out with his sling, and confronts the enemy. He hits Goliath in the head with a stone from his sling, knocking the giant down, and then grabs Goliath’s sword and cuts off his head. The Philistines withdraw and the Israelites are saved. David’s courage and faith illustrates the triumph of good over evil. Donatello’s bronze statue is famous as the first unsupported standing work of bronze cast during the Renaissance, and the first freestanding nude male sculpture made since antiquity. It depicts David with an enigmatic smile, posed with his foot on Goliath’s severed head just after defeating the giant. The youth is completely naked, apart from a laurel-topped hat and boots, and bears the sword of Goliath. The phrase “David and Goliath” has taken on a more popular meaning denoting an underdog situation, a contest wherein a smaller, weaker opponent faces a much bigger, stronger adversary.

_{Salomon de Bray (Dutch, 1597 – 1664), Samson with the Jawbone (1636), 64x52cm, Getty Center, Los Angeles.}

The biblical account states that Samson was a Nazirite, and that he was given immense strength to aid him against his enemies and allow him to perform superhuman feats, including slaying a lion with his bare hands and massacring an entire enemy army of Philistines using only the jawbone of a donkey. Holding the jawbone as his attribute, Samson looks upward, perhaps to God. The great strongman just slew a thousand Philistines with that jawbone. Overcome by thirst, he then drank from the rock at Lechi, a name that also means “jawbone” in Hebrew. Due to a mistaken translation in the Dutch Bible, some artists, like Salomon de Bray on the paining above, depicted Samson with a jawbone and water dripping out of the bone, rather than the rock issuing water.

Jael, Judith, David and Samson are just a few of the many heroes depicted in art. These four are exceptionally brave. Through their courage their people found victory and freedom. The message these four send, is to be brave in difficult times. Keep hope, keep faith, and set a step when there is the opportunity. It can change history, for oneself, and maybe for the world!

Jael, Judith, David and Samson; a print series.

In 1588 Hendrick Goltzius designed a series of four Heroes and Heroines from the Old Testament, after which Jacob Matham made the engravings. The print series could refer to events during the Dutch Revolt or The Eighty Years’ War (1568 – 1648), an armed conflict between The Netherlands under the leadership of William of Orange (“The Silent”) and Spain under King Philips II, the sovereign of The Netherlands. An end was reached in 1648 with the Peace of Münster when Spain recognised the Dutch Republic as an independent country. It’s the unlikely hero and heroine fighting and defeating the enemy; a print series with stories from the old bible books, translated into a contemporary political message.

On the drawings and the corresponding prints Jael, Judit, David and Samson are all portrayed full-length, in the foreground, with their characteristic attributes, while in the background their heroic deed is depicted. Jael holds the hammer and peg with which she killed Sisera, Judith displays the head of Holofernes and holds the sword with which she decapitated him, David leans on the gigantic sword with which he cut off the head of Goliath, that he carries in his left hand, finally Samson who holds the jawbone with which he slew a thoudanss Philistines. The preparatory drawings all still exist and are in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Hereunder on the left the drawings by Goltzius and on the right the prints as engraved by Matham. Once engraved into a copper plate and after printing, the print becomes a “negative” of the original drawing.