Cleveland Museum of Art

Apollo and Daphne

Date

c. 1700

Medium

terracotta

Culture

Italy, Florence, 17th century

Department

European Painting and Sculpture

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Apollo, the Greek and Roman god of the sun and the arts, fell in love with the nymph Daphne. Chased to a riverbank, Daphne prayed to her father, the river god, Peneus, for help. At the moment Apollo reached out to touch her, she transformed into a laurel tree, branches and roots sprouting from her body. This work reveals key preoccupations of artists working in Italy in the 1600s: novel, active compositions; fleeting moments; and transformation from one physical form into another. Soldani based this work on a large-scale marble sculpture from 1622–25 by the Roman artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Soldani shows Daphne in the process of turning into a tree to escape the persistent Apollo.

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.