Daphne1.0013_Pallaiuolo

C. Allen: "Charming as this version is, ... it is neither classical in form, nor does it really rise to the challenge of describing, as Ovid does, the transformation of a girl's body into a tree." Allen continues to compare M. de Marolles' overliteral dendrification of Daphne's skin which "looks like something from a manual of dermatology" and Bernini's balanced sculptural masterpiece which "evokes the pathos of Daphne's transformation without compromising the beauty of her body." (Cambridge Companion to Ovid, p. 341.)

“In early modern Italy as in classical Greece, [Apollo’s] pursuit of Daphne was regarded — almost without exception — as heroic as other types of male exploits would have been, including the multiple rapes perpetrated by other Olympian deities in general. It is important to remember that Petrarch, who wrote several sonnets about Apollo in the fourteenth century, viewed Apollo’s relentless quest for Daphne as the god’s tragic tale of unfulfilled love.” Yael Even, “The Emergence of Sexual Violence in Quattrocento Florentine Art,” E.E. DuBruck, ed., Violence in Fifteenth-Century Text and Image, Fifteenth-Century Studies 27 (2002) 115.

Perhaps Y. Even (in subsequent paragraphs) makes too much of Daphne’s placid facial expression. One might not reasonably anticipate the baroque emotions Bernini is able to create in his milieu. Interpreting the lack of facially expressed anguish may project a reading onto Pallaiuolo’s painting.