Apollo Pursuing Daphne

Apollo Pursuing Daphne depicts one of the best-known episodes in Ovid's Metamorphoses: Apollo, struck by one of Eros's arrows that awakens desire, chases the nymph Daphne, who rejects him. When she calls on her father, the river god Peneus, her body begins to turn into a laurel. Tiepolo chose the exact moment when this transformation starts, with the young woman's legs and hands already becoming branches.

The composition is built on diagonals that split the scene in two. On one side Apollo runs, wearing a laurel crown, a yellow cloak and a luminous halo that suggests the sun. On the other side the remaining figures cluster together: Eros, a winged boy hiding behind Daphne's cloak; Peneus, a bearded old man in a red mantle, beside a jar pouring water that identifies him as a river deity; and Daphne, half-undressed, leaning back against her father. Warm color and loose brushwork are typical of Tiepolo's Rococo style.

The painting is linked to the frescoes Tiepolo made for the Villa Valmarana around 1757, and it was paired with Venus and Vulcan. The artist had treated the same myth on other occasions, showing his lasting interest in this story of desire and metamorphosis.

Painter

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Date

1757

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

68 × 87 cm

Museum

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Movement

Rococo

Genre

mythological painting

Depicts

Daphne, Apollo

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