Apollo and Daphne (Pollaiuolo)

Apollo and Daphne is a small oil-on-panel painting from the workshop of the Florentine artists Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo, made around 1470 to 1480 and now usually attributed to Piero. It illustrates the moment in Ovid's Metamorphoses when the nymph Daphne turns into a laurel tree to escape the pursuing god Apollo. Its choice of a wood support and small size once led it to be mistaken for a fragment cut from a cassone, an Italian marriage chest, though it is now catalogued as an independent panel; its background vegetation, once brighter, has darkened irreversibly over time. William Coningham bought the painting in Rome in 1845, and Wynne Ellis bequeathed it to the National Gallery in London in 1876, where it still hangs. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/