Metamorphosis and the aesthetics of loss: I. Mourning Daphne –The Apollo and Daphne paintings of Nicolas Poussin

Abstract

The myth of Apollo and Daphne, as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is viewed through the self‐referential eye of the seicento painter, Nicolas Poussin. Collectively, the tree‐metaphoric myths are argued to metaphorically represent, mourn, and negate unbearable realities, including the developmental challenges of adolescence and adulthood – in particular, loss. Examined in the context of their aesthetic precedents and a close reading of Ovid ’s text, the two Apollo and Daphne paintings that bracket Poussin’s oeuvre are interpreted as conveying the conflict and ambiguity inherent to Ovid, as well as connotations more personal to the artist. The poetic and aesthetic reworking of the regressive, magical experience of metamorphosis restores it to the symbolic world of metaphor: for reparation, remembrance, and return.

Key words:

• Apollo and Daphne
• applied psychoanalysis
• fetish
• Metamorphoses
• metamorphosis
• metaphor
• mourning
• myth
• Nicolas Poussin
• Ovid

Notes

1. Ovid’s Metamorphoses I, 494. References to Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BCE–17/18 CE) follow this format, i.e., Book I, line 494, taken throughout from Charles Martin’s (2004) brilliant translation, chosen for its scrupulous fidelity to the Latin text.

2. From a letter of Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, Arles, c. 25 July 1880.

3. The pine tree’s flattened, ‘shaggy top’ results from its usual auto‐decapitation in maturity, due to its brittleness – itself a metaphor for Attis’ auto‐castration.

4. An earlier study considers animal metamorphosis (Jelliffe and Brink, 1917). The psychoanalytic literature may have followed Freud’s lead in his neglect of metamorphic myths.

5. The tale of the elderly couple is delightfully packed with descriptions of wooden objects recursively signifying aging, such as the couple’s walking sticks and “cups of beechwood, all patched up with yellow wax” (VII, 943–4).

6. Part II of this essay will further develop the myth’s exploitation of the tree’s representational plasticity to represent the conflictual, anxious maturation of a young girl into a woman, and, at the same time, the wishful reversal of this process, (Tutter, in press).

7. Biographical information regarding Poussin is drawn from Blunt, 1967; Christiansen, 2008; Cropper and Dempsey, 1996; Rosenberg, 2008; Thullier, 1995.

8. In classical myth not recounted in Metamorphoses, Leuce and Pitys meet the same fate: after her rape and abduction by Hades, Leuce transforms into a white poplar tree, while Pitys becomes a pine tree to escape the advances of Pan.

9. The traditional, gendered interpretation of Apollo and Daphne has it specifying frustrated, unattainable love, cf. Petrarch’s sonnets to his beloved ‘Laura’ [laurel].

10. The San Diego Museum of Art.

11. Costello being of course an exception; see also Cropper and Dempsey, 1996; Unglaub, 2004.

12. Given the otherwise important influence of Veronese on his early oeuvre, it is even more notable that Poussin departs fully from his predecessor’s tranquil treatment of the myth.

13. Ovid’s use of the metaphor of the tree ‘felled’ by the ‘woodsman’s axe’ strongly suggests that he held Cinyras, at least in part, culpable for Myrrha’s tragic fall.

14. Daphne’s unusual pose may reference Bernado Daddi’s 16th century engraving (The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), while her costume and quiver recalls Francesco Albani’s painting (1615–1620) in the Louvre, wherein Daphne carries a spear – suggesting, perhaps, that only a phallic woman would (could?) repudiate Apollo.

15. Hyacinthus, beloved of Apollo, was ‘accidentally’ killed by the latter’s discus, emblematic of Apollo’s competitive strivings. While most identify the dead figure as Hyacinthus, others argue that it represents Leucippus, who in a lesser‐known version of the myth is a suitor of Daphne, who is killed by nymphs in her defense (Cropper and Dempsey, 1996). In any case, the figure is a casualty of love.

16. Similarly, Cropper and Dempsey (1996) interpret the figure of Mars in Poussin’s Mars and Venus, strikingly lacking a male genital, as representing the painter mutilated by syphilis; Unglaub (2004) believes Anna Marie was also the model for Venus. The comparison is easily extended to 1664 A+D: consistent with the reiterated signification of a compromised Poussin, Mars and Apollo are both passively recumbent, and Mars’ quiver is also being emptied of arrows. Other paintings continue the theme of a maiden administering to a fallen man, e.g. Rinaldo.