Scipione Borghese Villa Borghese, Bernini produced a life-sized figure of David (1623) and three sculptural groups with mythological themes. The culminating work in this series that Bernini created for Borghese, Apollo and Daphne (1623–25), represents an incident popular in Italian poetry of the early seventeenth century, and ultimately derived from the Metamorphoses by the ancient Roman poet Ovid. Bernini depicts Apollo reaching out toward the river nymph Daphne just as she is transformed into a laurel tree by her father in order to prevent her from being burned by the touch of the god of the sun. Understood within its original intellectual
Daphne mezereum Daphne mezereum Daphne mezereum, commonly known as February daphne, mezereon, mezereum, spurge laurel or spurge olive, is a species of "Daphne" in the flowering plant family Thymelaeaceae, native to most of Europe and Western Asia, north to northern Scandinavia and Russia. In southern Europe it is confined to medium to higher elevations and in the subalpine vegetation zone, but descends to near sea level in northern Europe. It is generally confined to soils derived from limestone. It is a deciduous shrub growing to 1.5 m tall. The leaves are soft, 3–8 cm long and 1–2 cm broad, arranged spirally on