Daphne2.0002_DeMarolles

facsimile in .pdf
OGCMA s.v. "Daphne"
Classical Sources:
Ovid Met. 7.690ff., 13.576ff.
Pausanias 10.7.8
Hyginus Fab. 203

Michel de Marolles, illustrator, "Daphne," woodcut 1655, in Tableaux du Temple des Muses.

This image is taken from a facsimile edition published 1709 by P. Tempest, London as iconologia and then reprinted by Garland in 1976.

Ovid's fictional ambivalence leads to different artistic approaches: Pollaiuolo, Michel de Marolles, Bernini

Apollo pursuing Daphne, who transforms into a laurel tree, with Cupid overhead aiming an arrow

See Christopher Allen, "Ovid and Art," in P. Hardie, ed., Cambridge Companion to Ovid (CUP 2002), 336 - 67.

Allen: " literalism leads to illustration that looks like something from a manual of dermatology."

Contrast this with Pollaiuolo's and Bernini's which captures "pathos with physical beauty."

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1400 – 1990’s, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.