With humans once again populating the earth after its floodwaters had receded, and the Python vanquished by Apollo, Ovid leads into an aetiological myth (explaining the origin of something) about that god. Of the deities whose love affairs Ovid describes, Apollo seems the least successful. Once he has killed the Python, he takes the mickey out of Cupid over his use of bow and arrows, calling him a mischievous boy, and claiming that only a real man like him should use the weapon.

Cupid responds in kind, claiming that his bow will vanquish even Apollo. He then flies to the top of Mount Parnassus, and looses two arrows: a golden one aimed at Apollo, to inflame him with love for Daphne, the other a special lead-tipped arrow, which turns her off all his amorous advances.

In the last year of Nicolas Poussin’s life, the master of narrative painting made this, currently titled Apollo in Love with Daphne (1664). Its key actors are all at its edges: Apollo sits at the left looking across the painting, with Cupid just in front of him, about to loose an arrow at Daphne, who sits with her bearded father at the far right. Mercury is behind Apollo, at the left edge, apparently about to steal one of his arrows. Two women lounge in the prominent oak tree at the left, and there is no reference to Daphne’s imminent pursuit or transformation.

The stage is now set for the first of Ovid’s many tales of attempted rape or seduction. Apollo is completely smitten with Daphne, a naiad or water-nymph, but she wants nothing to do with him. Even before she was struck by Cupid’s lead arrow, she had resolved to remain a virgin, rejecting every suitor, and events only strengthen her resolution.

It’s unclear what the great JMW Turner intended in his Story of Apollo and Daphne, exhibited in 1837. In the foreground, the tiny figures of a greyhound coursing a hare quote Ovid’s metaphor. Behind them are Apollo and Daphne, apparently strolling gently together, with Cupid to the rear. Much of the painting is an elaborate fantasy landscape apparently supposed to represent Tempe (which is in fact a narrow ravine, not an open valley like the vale of Larissa).

His heart on fire for her, and his mind wondering dangerously towards raw lust, Apollo starts to chase Daphne through the countryside. As he runs he breathlessly tries to persuade her to stop and give in to his desires, but she keeps running just out of his reach. Eventually the pair tire, she stops and prays to her father, the river-god Peneus, and to Mother Earth to destroy her beauty or change her body. Before she has finished uttering those words, she is transformed into a laurel, her face hidden by leaves.

Thus Daphne, whose name is Greek for laurel, escaped the clutches of Apollo. Given his continuing love for Daphne, it’s also the story of how he decreed that crowns of laurel should be awarded to victors of games, and the like.

For reference, the distinctive leaves and flowers of the laurel are shown in Köhler and Müller’s botanical illustration above.

John William Waterhouse’s Apollo and Daphne from 1908 is an unconventional treatment of this myth. Apollo, holding his lyre with his left hand, has just reached Daphne, who looks justifiably alarmed. However, instead of following tradition and showing her transforming into a laurel, she is being encased within one.

Pollaiuolo’s Apollo and Daphne (c 1470-80) is one of the earliest, and remains one of the most famous, depictions of this myth. Apollo is embracing Daphne as she changes into a laurel. Already her arms have become exuberant bushes, and her feet are rapidly rooting into the ground.

Jacopo Tintoretto’s Apollo and Daphne (1541-42) shows the moment of peripeteia, at which Apollo catches Daphne, just as she is being transformed into a laurel tree. The billowing scarf, flowing hair, and Apollo’s legs tell of the pursuit just ended, and the abundant branches and leaves forming from Daphne’s arms tell of the tree she is becoming.

The other famous painting of this myth is Tiepolo’s Apollo and Daphne (c 1744-45), which brings in Cupid, who is somewhat immodestly sheltering from his victim Apollo beneath Daphne’s billowing robe. In front of them, his back to the viewer, is Daphne’s father, the river-god Peneus, carrying an oar as his attribute. Daphne’s transformation is at a much earlier stage, the fingers of her right hand sprouting leaves, but it’s obvious what’s just about to happen. It’s also noteworthy that Apollo already wears a crown of laurels, rather than oak leaves.

Although undated, I suspect that Ary Renan painted The Transformation of Daphne in the 1880s. Unusually, Daphne’s back is turned to the viewer, and Apollo is nowhere to be seen.

Ovid then moves his attention from Apollo to the leader of the gods Jupiter for the next intertwined series of transformations.