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 laureola Daphne laureola Daphne laureola, commonly called spurge-laurel (or daphne-laurel, laurel-leaved daphne, olive-spurge, wood laurel, copse laurel), is a shrub in the flowering plant family Thymelaeaceae. Despite the name, this woodland plant is neither a spurge nor a laurel. Its native range covers much of Europe and extends to Algeria, Morocco and the Azores. With "Daphne mezereum" it is one of two species of "Daphne" native to Britain, both of which have a strong preference for alkaline soils and are most commonly found in limestone areas, although "D. laureola" is also found on clay. However, unlike "D. mezereum", "D. laureola" is