In the Villa Borghese Museum is exhibited one of the most beautiful sculpted groups made by Bernini, the genius of the Baroque style, which was realized around the 1622. I'm speaking about his Apollo and Daphne, a statue that is simply unique in its pursuit of details, in its naturalism, in its sophistication, and its many points of view. Then it is my favourite Bernini's masterpiece here!
But today, more than on the aesthetics and the style, I would like to reflect on the myth! Yes, because we sometimes forget how the artists, but even the masters like Bernini, in the past were really inspired by the ancient and curious stories which came from the roman and Greek mythology. Usually gods and other strange characters were the main protagonists of masterpieces like this one. And now let's talk about the story, starring Apollo and Daphne.
He was the God of the Sun and of the Arts, a prescient and all-seeing, while she was a nymph and the Peneo’s daughter, a river of Thessaly, which, as often happened in the past, it was personified. All begins when Cupid, the God of Love and Venus’ son, was nocking the bow of Apollo, a weapon that only the owner, however, knew how to handle. The attempts of Cupid went to empty, and so Apollo took him around, telling him:"what have you to do with the weapons, the child arrogant?...You just stir with your flame I do not know what love" (from Ovid's Metamorphoses). We have to imagine how Cupid couldn’t be very happy to hear bad words, so he found his vengeance. He pierced Apollo with one of his gold arrows, which led to a sudden and uncontrollable love. Then struck Daphne, but this time with a lead arrow that brought Daphne to reject any kind of love. For this reason when a divinity, even beautiful and perfect like Apollo, tried to flirt with Daphne she, frightened and reluctant, refused him escaping away!
Vain were the attempts of Apollo, who, however, was always a very powerful God. And a nymph can not escape from a God. At the end Apollo reaches Daphne but she, who no longer knows what to do, find refuge praying to his father, Peneo, asking to be saved. And suddenly, behold the transformation, the metamorphosis that takes you Daphne turning into a tree, a beautiful laurel. It was the solution found by Peneo, in order to avoid that Apollo could take his daughter. And this is the moment brilliantly captured by Bernini, when the hands of her turn into leaves, when her legs become trunk and bark trees. Little final curiosity: Ovid himself in his Metamorphoses, related the use of the laurel as a symbol of power used by the ancient Romans from this episode. Once turned into a tree Apollo, still in love with her, exclaimed:"Since you cannot be my spouse, you'll be my tree. My hair, my lyre, my quiver, o laurel, you themes are you. You will crown the general who will be happy for the victory, when a chorus cheering will intone the hymn of triumph, and the Capitol will see long processions. You the same as a guardian faithful, you will be hung at the gates of the royal palace of Augustus...". So a mythology that, in some degree, became a cultural and powerful sign. And here, inside the Museum of Villa Borghese, there is another Bernini's masterpiece that is able to display, in a marble way, a famous mythological episode. It is time to click here...