The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race.
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow.
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.
-Andrew Marvell, from "The Garden" [1]
In Filippo Baldinucci's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1682), the marble group of Apollo and Daphne (Fig. 1) is cast as the youthful sculptor's first great public triumph. After invoking the topos that mere words cannot ...