Apollo catches the nymph Daphne at the instant she turns into a laurel tree, as Ovid tells it. Bark is already closing over her legs, leaves burst from her fingers and her mouth opens in alarm. Bernini carved it in his early twenties for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, with his assistant Giuliano Finelli cutting some of the finest leaves and twigs.
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Her toes are turning into roots that grip the rock. On the base, a moralising couplet by Maffeo Barberini, the future Pope Urban VIII, justifies the pagan chase.
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