Apollo and Daphne: Bernini and the golden laser Baroque burgers

It’s a picture most everyone has seen floating around the Internet: an image of a hand gripping a thigh, shaped from the living rock. Wait, who calls it the “living rock” anyway? I’ve heard that almost as many times as I’ve seen the picture, and it doesn’t make any sense.

That image is from a sculpture called “The Rape of Prosperina,” which isn’t really what we think of as a “rape” at all. It’s a kidnapping. Not to say that’s much better.

That sculpture gets all the praise, but there’s another nearby that’s just as impressive. It’s called “Apollo and Daphne,” and it’s by the same dude.

The Coolest Name in Italy

His name is Gianlorenzo Bernini, and I dare you to come up with a more awesome name than that. Go ahead, try. You can’t do it. Bernini’s the guy people cite when they’re trying to show off — like “Oh, Michelangelo? He’s okay. I prefer Bernini myself,” they’ll say while adjusting their ascots and brushing dust from the polo field off their spats.

But those who haven’t heard of Bernini have certainly seen his works. No, I’m not just talking about the thigh being squeezed.

The baldachin in St. Peter’s Basilica? Bernini.

The Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona? Bernini.

The entire St. Peter’s Square? Bernini.

The first KFC? Colonel Sanders.

The point I was sauntering up to before that atrocious joke is that Bernini’s everywhere in Rome. This tends to happen when you’ve got Popes thinking you’re the man. And let me tell you, Bernini was as prolific as he was capable. The dude was a machine when it came to pumping out art.

Bernini was born into this world — his dad was a sculptor, and some of the prodigy’s first works were done in collaboration with him. Kind of like how Will Smith kept trying to make his kid a star, except Bernini was actually talented.

The boy was so talented, a Pope supposedly said “This child will be the Michelangelo of his age.” Of course that little story comes to us courtesy of Bernini’s son, and you’d expect Jaden Smith to say nice things about his dad.

Even though this was the century after the one in which Michelangelo made his mark, things worked more or less the same when it came to the creation of art. If you were good, some super wealthy Catholics were going to pay you to make things.

And so it was that Bernini got commissions from Cardinal Borghese, a wild art fiend who also funded the famous painter Caravaggio. The Cardinal shares a name with the Borghese Gallery — which makes sense, because it was his house and all. It’s an awesome museum chock full o’ Berninis in Rome where I took many of these pictures. Including the ones of Apollo and Daphne.

Boo Protestants!

Now, the sculpture of Apollo and Daphne we’re talking about wasn’t really part of a religious movement that would later take a starring role in Bernini’s life — but it’s impossible to discuss this statue in a vacuum. Partially because you can’t talk in a vacuum. There’s no air.

About a hundred years earlier, a guy named Martin Luther got fed up with the behavior of the Catholic Church — you know, taking money to save you from sin and so forth. And that was just about the shortest and most vague description of the Protestant Reformation you’ll ever come across.

Part of this crusade involved the rejection of “images” — a belief that religious art was bad. It also involved its fair share of “iconoclasm,” the destruction of religious images. I don’t necessarily say that because it’s a necessary point to make, but because “iconoclasm” is an awesome word and I’ll take any opportunity I can to bust it out. If I was a pro wrestler, I’d be a wrestling priest and my finishing move would be called the “Iconoclasm.”

So this brought about the “Counter Reformation,” a movement with a highly original name. Again, I’m not getting too in depth, but suffice to say that part of it involved “Oh, you don’t like art? Well guess what? We’ll show you some god damned ART.”

If It Ain’t Baroque, Don’t Fix It

If you’re hoping that title up above will make sense, it won’t. I just wanted to sound clever without putting in the work.

Think of it this way: If the Protestants are eating plain hot dogs, the Catholics are eating burgers from Five Guys. And the burgers are dipped in gold, with lasers shooting out of them.

That’s Baroque art: golden laser burgers.

Mmm, yeah. Slather those delicious gilded designs all over the place. Blind them with the shock and awe of God. Such tasty rapture.

In the world of sculpture, this was an evolution of the works of the Renaissance and artists like Michelangelo. Renaissance sculpture was a bit of a tribute to that of the ancient world: a stable celebration of the human form.

Look at Michelangelo’s David: stable. The subject is standing in a pose, as though you told him you were about to take his picture. Things would later evolve a bit with the Mannerism of the Late Renaissance, but art was about to shift into a new form.

A Baroque sculpture is anything but stable. It’s unbalanced, off-kilter; a swirling, twisting, undulating single moment in time, captured and held. If the figures came to life, their positioning would be gone in an instant. The sculpture of Apollo and Daphne is just one of many examples of this.

And Bernini was Mr. Baroque. He probably wouldn’t want to change his name, though. Why would he? He’s Gianlorenzo Bernini.

Now, his later works would be definitively Catholic. But this sculpture, one of four large ones he made for Cardinal Borghese, certainly aren’t — even though I think it’s hard to look at them and not see them in the context of the that oh-so-excitingly named Counter Reformation.

The Tale of Apollo and Daphne

Finally, here we are: The story of the sculpture itself. You still with me, or did you nod off like someone watching the Smiths in “After Earth”?

This is a tale from Greek mythology, ripped off and repurposed by the Romans, the world’s most beloved Greek cosplayers.

The best known version comes from a Roman poet named Ovid, in his “Metamorphoses.” There’s three main characters: Apollo and Daphne, with an appearance by Cupid. Apollo has just killed a giant snake at Delphi. Yes, that Delphi. The one with the Oracle. That was in Apollo’s temple.

So Apollo’s peacocking. I suppose I would be too, if I’d just whooped a giant snake. He sees Cupid with his bow, and starts ripping on him: like, “Haha, you little weakling, you’re just a teeny little baby and you aren’t man enough to go running around with a big boy weapon like that!”

Cupid doesn’t take kindly to Apollo strutting around and doing a little dance after spiking the football on the snake’s head. This, from Ovid:

“There, from his quiver he plucked arrows twain, most curiously wrought of different art; one love exciting, one repelling love.”

So Cupid shoots Apollo with the “exciting” arrow. The “repelling” one goes to Daphne, a super hot nymph. Now, I’m not the one saying she’s super hot. Her dad is. Not in a creepy way, mind you — she was living the life of a virgin, and her dad said “Yeah, good luck with that, dudes are way into you.”

Okay, maybe that is kind of creepy.

Her dad’s a river god, and gives her what she wants. He agrees to let her remain unmarried to skip through the forest, or whatever it is nymphs do.

You know where this is going, right? Apollo sees Daphne: instantaneous infatuation. Daphne’s grossed out and runs away. He chases her, but she’s every bit as fast as he is. Apollo’s yelling and bragging, shouting that he’s super strong and Zeus is his dad and he has a dozen Lamborghinis and so many tinder matches and she just needs to chill out and let him catch up.

Apollo and Daphne are caught in this seemingly eternal hunt.

Apollo picks up the pace. Ovid compares it to a greyhound seeing a “frightened hare.” They get close to the river where Daphne’s dad is, and she starts calling for help, begging him to change her body. I guess it’s the only way she thinks she can escape. Again, from Ovid:

“…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.”

And so, Daphne is turned into a laurel tree. Apollo still loves her, and tries to kiss the bark even as she pulls away. He pledges to honor her forever by placing laurel leaves on his head.

Thus, we end up with depictions of Apollo wearing a laurel wreath, a tradition that carried through to images of Roman emperors.

Metamorphosis

Remember the whole “moment captured in time” thing? I can’t think of any sculpture that fits the Baroque period of the 1600’s quite as well as this one of Apollo and Daphne.

Apollo is precariously perched on one leg. Daphne still moves to escape, even as her fingers turn to branches and her feet to roots. Apollo is trapped in the instant of finally getting what he wants, but even as he touches her stomach, it changes into bark. And as they’re caught in this moment, Apollo and Daphne are intertwined.

Not to get too poetic, but what really strikes me is how this is depicting a moment of transformation; and even as Daphne changes, so too did Bernini coax this masterpiece out of a block of marble.

The living rock, one might say.

You’ll recall I mentioned this having a place in the Counter Reformation, which was fundamentally Catholic — and yet, this is a “pagan” piece commissioned by a Cardinal.

And while it’s obvious that we’ll ascribe our own meanings to the tale of Apollo and Daphne — meanings that may not have been shared by the Greeks or the Romans — so too did the Cardinal. He had a little quote put on the sculpture:

“Those who love to pursue fleeting forms of pleasure, in the end only find leaves and bitter berries in their hands.”