Apollon et Daphne
Medium
lithograph
Classification
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Rosenwald Collection
Accession Number
1943.3.2785
Art Historical Context
In the National Gallery of Art's Rosenwald Collection, Théodore Chassériau's *Apollon et Daphne* (1844) captures a timeless moment from Ovid's *Metamorphoses*. This lithograph depicts the mythological pursuit of the nymph Daphne by the god Apollo, who is famously transformed into a laurel tree to escape his advances. Chassériau, a prodigious French artist (1819–1856) trained under Ingres, blended Neoclassical precision with Romantic passion, infusing classical tales with emotional intensity and exotic allure. Rendered as a lithograph—a revolutionary 19th-century printmaking technique using gr...
About the Artist
Théodore Chassériau · 1819–1856
Théodore Chassériau was born on September 20, 1819, in El Limón, Samaná, in the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo — present-day Dominican Republic — to a French father and a Creole mother. The family relocated to Paris in 1820, and the young Chassériau's exceptional talent was evident almost immediately. At just eleven years old, in 1830, he was accepted into the prestigious studio of Jean-Auguste-D...