Daphne Changed into a Laurel Tree

This engraving depicts the climax of the myth from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, showing Apollo reaching out to grasp Daphne just as her fingers and hair sprout into laurel branches. Apollo is shown in a dynamic stride with his bow and billowing drapery, while a small Cupid flies in the distance, having instigated the unrequited love. The scene is set in a rocky landscape rendered with the swelling and tapering lines characteristic of late 16th-century Dutch engraving.

This work belongs to a series illustrating Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a text that served Renaissance thinkers as a repository of hidden natural and moral truths. Within the Western esoteric tradition, these myths of transformation were often viewed as allegorical depictions of the mutability of matter and the soul's journey through various states of being.