Apollo & Daphne

Statue of Apollo & Daphne. Handmade of alabaster,and painted in museum patina.

Apollo and Daphne is a life-sized Baroque marble sculpture by Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, executed between 1622 and 1625. Housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, the work depicts the climax of their  story  in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Iconography of Apollo & Daphne

When Phoebus (Apollo), fated by Cupid’s love-exciting arrow, sees Daphne, the maiden daughter of Peneus, a river god, he is filled with wonder at her beauty and consumed by desire. But she has been fated by Cupid’s love-repelling arrow and denies the love of men. As the Nymph flees he relentlessly chases her—boasting, pleading, and promising everything. When her strength is finally spent she prays to her father Peneus:

“Destroy the beauty that has injured me, or change the body that destroys my life.”.   Before her prayer was ended, torpor seized on all her body, and a thin bark closed around her gentle bosom.  And her hair became as moving leaves; her arms were changed to waving branches, and her active feet as clinging roots were fastened to the ground—her face was hidden with encircling leaves.

The meaning of Apollo and Dafne statue is the unfulfilled love.

Daphne was a nymph whose parentage varies. She scorned Apollo’s advances and ran away from him. When Apollo chased her in order to persuade her, she changed herself into a laurel tree. According to other versions, she cried for help during the chase, and Gaea helped her by taking her in and placing a laurel tree in her place.  According to Roman poet Ovid, the chase was brought about by Cupid, who hit Apollo with golden arrow of love and Daphne with leaden arrow of hatred. The myth explains the origin of the laurel and connection of Apollo with the laurel and its leaves, which his priestess employed at Delphi. The leaves became the symbol of victory and laurel wreaths were given to the victors of the Pythian games.