Week 8 assignment: essay – interrelationships reflection apa format | Applied Sciences homework help
- Try writing your own song or your own poem as an interpretation of van Gogh’s painting.
Sculpture Interprets Poetry: Apollo and Daphne The Roman poet Ovid (43 BCE–17 CE) has inspired artists even into modern times. His masterpiece, The Metamorphoses, includes a large number of myths that were of interest to his own time and that have inspired readers of all ages. The title implies changes, virtually all kinds of changes imaginable in the natural and divine worlds. The sense that the world of Roman deities intersected with humankind had its Greek counterpart in Homer, whose heroes often had to deal with the interference of the gods in their lives. Ovid inspired Shakespeare in literature, Botticelli in paint- ing, and perhaps most impressively the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). Bernini’s technique as a sculptor was without peer in his era. His purposes were quite different from those of most modern sculptors in that he was not particularly jac16871_ch15_378-396.indd 387 12/9/17 11:19 AM 388
CHAPTER 15
interested in “truth to materials.” If anything, he was more interested in showing how he could defy his materials and make marble, for example, appear to be flesh in motion. Apollo and Daphne (1622–1625) represents a section of The Metamorphoses in which the god Apollo falls in love with the nymph Daphne (Figure 15-5). Cupid had previously hit Apollo’s heart with an arrow to inflame him, while he hit Daphne with an arrow designed to make her reject love entirely. Cupid did this in revenge for Apollo’s having killed the Python with a bow and arrow. Apollo woos Daphne fruitlessly, she resists, and he attempts to rape her. As she flees from him, she pleads with her father, the river god Peneius, to rescue her, and he turns her into a laurel tree just as Apollo reaches his prey. Here is the moment in Ovid: The god by grace of hope, the girl, despair, Still kept their increasing pace until his lips Breathed at her shoulder; and almost spent, The girl saw waves of a familiar river, Her father’s home, and in a trembling voice Called, “Father, if your waters still hold charms To save your daughter, cover with green earth This body I wear too well,’’ and as she spoke A soaring drowsiness possessed her; growing In earth she stood, white thighs embraced by climbing Bark, her white arms branches, her fair head swaying In a cloud of leaves; all that was Daphne bowed In the stirring of the wind, the glittering green Leaf twined within her hair and she was laurel. FIGURE 15-5 Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne. 1622– 1625. Marble, 8 feet high. Galleria Borghese, Rome.The sculpture portrays Ovid’s story of Apollo’s foiled attempt to rape the nymph Daphne. ©Scala/Art Resource, NY jac16871_ch15_378-396.indd 388 12/9/17 11:19 AM 389
THE INTERRELATIONSHIPS OF THE ARTS
EXPERIENCING Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne and Ovid’s The Metamorphoses