Apollo and Daphne

The unveiling in 1625 of the marble group of Apollo and Daphne in the Villa Borghese, Rome, caused a sensation and made a European celebrity of its creator, Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). The scene, emblematic of the victory of Chastity over Love, derives from Ovid's Metamorphoses and describes how Apollo, struck by Cupid's golden arrow, pursues Daphne, who has in turn been struck by Cupid's lead arrow, which stirs her to flee. During her pursuit, Daphne prays to her father, the river god Peneus, for salvation and at that moment branches sprout from her arms and roots from her feet and she is eventually transformed into a laurel tree: "a thin bark closed around her gentle bosom, and her hair became as moving leaves; her arms were changed to waving branches, and her active feet as clinging roots were fastened to the ground - her face was hidden with encircling leaves." (Metamorphoses I, 453 ff.)

The model upon which the present bronze is based has previously been attributed both to Antoine Coysevox (1640-1720) and Giovanni Battista Foggini (1652-1725). However, recent research has indicated that it is most likely the work of the French sculptor François Lespingola (Berger and Krahn, loc. cit.). In 1665, Lespingola obtained the third sculpture prize at the Académie and gained a Royal Scholarship to study at the newly founded French Royal Academy in Rome, in 1666. Unlike most of his contemporaries, who had to make copies of antiquities, Lespingola was also allowed to create his own models. He returned to Paris in 1675 and was admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture and in 1676 was fully employed in the service of Louis XIV. In this capacity, his main activity was the design and execution of models for many of the largest and most important royal commissions at the Château de Versailles and the Invalides.