You should know that, of the splendid Bernini sculptures on display in this museum, Apollo and Daphne is considered his foremost masterpiece.
If you are not familiar with the myth to which the work refers, I will briefly summarize it for you.
Apollo made the mistake of showing off in front of Cupid who, rather temperamental, decided to take revenge by playing a cruel trick on him. He shot Apollo with a golden arrow to make him fall in love with the first unfortunate woman that came his way, namely poor Daphne, and then pierced the latter with a lead arrow to prevent her from reciprocating anyone's love.
Let us say that perhaps the cruelest subject in this story was Cupid who, in order to take his revenge, did not calculate the side effects, as the real victim in the end was Daphne. The girl, in fact, terrified of Apollo whose love she could not accept, asked her father Peneus, a river goddess, to change her form and she was turned into a laurel plant.
What is evident is that Bernini has masterfully rendered the basic elements of the narrative.
See how clear the feelings of the two protagonists are: the bewildered look of Apollo, who sees any chance of being able to love Daphne fade away, and the expression of the astonished, but also frightened girl, who sees her escape prevented by her very transformation.
In addition to his ability to render the moment of Daphne's metamorphosis to the observer, as I mentioned in the previous file, note how Bernini was also able to render the idea of Apollo's movement, abruptly interrupted at the moment when he manages to grasp the girl. He still has one foot raised, his cloak is suspended, and his hair is swept backwards.
Here's an interesting fact: when Bernini's sculptural groups were first exhibited at the Villa Borghese, in order to justify the presence of pagan scenes in the residence of a high prelate, they resorted to the stratagem of attaching an inscription that gave a meaning that could be shared by Christian ethics. And so, for example, for Apollo and Daphne it was written that ‘he who loves and pursues the joys of fleeting beauty, fills his hand with foliage and harvests bitter berries’, which was meant to signify that beauty eventually vanishes and nothing remains.
