Visualizing Desire: A Review of Love, Lust, and Loss in Renaissance Europe at the Smart Museum
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 consumption portends attempted rape—is touched off by a moment of calm spectatorship. Apollo is all action...
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