FERDINANDO VICHI, AFTER GIANLORENZO BERNINI | APOLLO AND DAPHNE

Gianlorenzo Bernini's Apollo and Daphne of 1622-25 introduced an entirely new sculptural aesthetic and is widely admired as one of the great masterpieces that ushered in the Baroque period in sculpture. He depicts the moment Daphne turns into a tree in a clever play on the sculptural medium. 

For the last and most ambitious of Bernini’s iconic mythological groups, the artist naturally found his inspiration in Antiquity, turning to the renowned Apollo Belvedere which stood in the Vatican. The skill of Bernini’s transformation of the pose adopted by the antique is truly astounding, endowing his model with great energy and dynamism, whilst capturing the god’s shock and breathlessness at the end of the chase.

Baldinucci’s biography of Bernini describes how immediately after the marble was finished, ‘such acclamation arose that all Rome rushed to view it as though it were a miracle.’ This rapturous response to Bernini’s group as a divine relic is echoed in the morality of its accompanying Latin inscription:

The lover who would fleeting beauty clasp

plucks bitter fruit; dry leaves are all he’ll grasp.