This activity is made possible in part by a grant from WNET/PBS 13, New York, through PBS 8/WDSE, Duluth.

Bernini’s most famous sculptures, among them David (1624),The Ecstasy of St. Theresa (1647), and Apollo and Daphne (1625), freeze action at the split second of their highest ecstatic moments. Other artworks in this section of the Portrait, Identity, Culture exhibition are similar in attention. From Sebastiano Ricci’s Ecstasy of St. Francis, to Jeff Tibbett’s On a Wing and a Prayer, and of course, Vichi’s copy of Bernini, all depend on the depiction of the transformative moment for their power.

 

Bernini’s original Apollo and Daphne was carved for Cardinal Scripione Borghese, his foremost patron at the time. The last of Bernini’s sculptures commissioned by the Borghese family, it can still be seen in the Villa Borghese, in Rome. The presence of this non-Christian mythical story in the Cardinal’s villa was justified by a moral couplet written by Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (later Pope Urban VIII) and engraved on the sculpture’s base:

 

The lover who would fleeting beauty follow
Plucks bitter berries, and leaves his hands hollow.

 

Fine reproductions of sculptures by famous Italian masters were readily available to American tourists visiting Europe. A copy of a key subject by one of Italy’s most famous artists, like Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, was a highly desirable souvenir. Ferdinando Vichi was part of a talented group of Tuscan sculptors associated with the Bazzanti Gallery in Florence. His compositions are varied in subject matter, ranging from Romantic portrait busts, Orientalist themes and Renaissance- and Baroque-inspired copies. Like many other late nineteenth-century sculptors, Vichi often took inspiration from moral narratives, including those from Greek mythology.