Daphne, a beautiful mountain nymph, had the bad luck of attracting the affection of Apollo, the god of reason, music, and poetry. Apollo was returning from slaying a monster named Python when he saw Cupid. Apollo bragged to Cupid that his bow was bigger than Cupid’s. Angered by the insult, Cupid shot him with a golden love arrow causing Apollo to fall in love with the first person he saw. He then shot Daphne with a lead-tipped arrow causing her to be impervious to love. At that moment, Apollo caught sight of Daphne, who was out hunting, and fell in love. But Daphne was not interested. He began to chase her. Daphne, a superb athlete tried to run away, but she was no match for Apollo. He was close behind when she reached her father, the river god Peneus. Hearing her cries for help, Peneus quickly transformed Daphne into a laurel tree.

Apollo reached the tree and, still enamoured with Daphne, he mourned, as Ovid wrote in the Metamorphoses:

Fairest of maidens, you are lost to me. But at least you shall be my tree. With your leaves my victors shall wreathe their brows. You shall have your part in all my triumphs. Apollo and his laurel shall be joined together wherever songs are sung and stories told.

This explains why the laurel is a symbol of Apollo and why winners of competitions in sports, music, and poetry were crowned with laurel leaves.

Throughout his career, Tiepolo painted pictures of mythological themes. The subjects of these works came from the best-known stories of ancient literature. This depiction of Apollo and Daphne comes directly from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Tiepolo was born in Venice and, like other Venetian painters before him, he painted with sunlit brilliance, reveling in color and light. In his twenties he had already won an international reputation and became the most important painter in Venice in the eighteenth century.

Discussion Questions:

• What moment in the story of Apollo and Daphne has Tiepolo depicted? (The moment in which Daphne is turning into a tree.) How do we know Daphne is turning into a tree? (Her fingers are sprouting branches, her left leg is rooting in the ground as a tree stump, and her neck seems to be thickening into woody bark.)
• Why do you think Tiepolo painted this moment?
• Tiepolo painted Apollo crowned with a laurel wreath to identify him. Why did laurel become a symbol of Apollo?
• When artists use horizontal and vertical lines, their paintings often look very stable and still. Take a look at the lines in this painting. How would you describe them?
  See the way the figures look as if they are moving? Tiepolo used diagonal and curved lines that make them seem to move. See if you can make the same gestures with your body.
• What customs are explained in this story?
• How was this story affected by Cupid’s rashly shooting Apollo with an arrow? If you were Cupid, do you think you would have made the same choice? Why or why not? What if you were Apollo who bullied Cupid and chased Daphne? How might you have handled the situations differently? If someone liked you but you didn't like him or her, how would you handle the situation?