Giovan Gioseffo News Today

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has made the most of a loan exchange with the Palazzo Barberini in Rome

Two striking spalliere (paintings made to be shown at shoulder height) depict the pursuit of Daphne by Apollo. The first presents her asleep in a rural scene, dress falling open at the thigh where a zagging gold thread strains to keep the folds together. Apollo stands over her, leaning on a staff, head in profile, gaze intent on the recumbent figure. His impending act of predation—we know, as fifteenth-century viewers would have known from their Ovid, that this balmy scene of visual consumpt...