This canvas belongs to the group of old paintings kept at Briord, most of which date from the early nineteenth century. Back from the conservation studio, it shows the precise instant when the nymph Daphne, seized by Apollo, is turning into a laurel.
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Click the image to enlarge — the markers lead to the annotated details.
- Title
- Apollo and Daphne
- Subject
- Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I
- Date
- Early nineteenth century (Conservation report, Ariane Blanche studio)
- Technique
- Oil on canvas
- Support
- Linen canvas
- Dimensions
- h. 85 × l. 150 cm (canvas only, without its frame)
- Frame
- Original frame preserved, currently under conservation
- Location
- The Château of Briord — Grand staircase of the entrance hall
- Inventory
- BRD-TAB-001
- Conservation
- Atelier Ariane Blanche, Nantes
varnish: satin — returned to the estate on July 26, 2026
The subject
The story comes from Ovid, in the first book of the Metamorphoses. Apollo, elated at having slain the serpent Python, mocks Cupid and his childish bow. The archer takes his revenge: he looses at the god a golden arrow that makes him love, and at the nymph Daphne, daughter of the river Peneus, a leaden arrow that makes her flee. So begins the chase.
Daphne runs, Apollo gains ground. Her strength spent, on the bank of her father’s waters, she begs him to take from her the beauty that is her undoing. The answer comes at once: bark closes over her sides, her hair becomes foliage, her arms become branches, her feet take root. Apollo embraces nothing but a tree — yet beneath the bark he can still feel a heart beating. He then makes the laurel his emblem.
It is this very short instant that the painter chose: neither the chase, nor the finished tree, but the exact second when the hand becomes a branch.
The composition
The canvas measures 85 cm high by 150 cm wide: a landscape format, which is uncommon for this subject. The vertical, which naturally accompanies the upward thrust of the tree, was the more frequent solution. Here the painter stretches the scene instead: the two bodies occupy the left half, while the right opens onto wooded country that fades into shadow.
Apollo bursts in from the left, one knee already on the ground, his coral cloak carried by his momentum and his foot shod in laced antique buskins. Both his hands close on Daphne’s waist — at the very moment she escapes him. She, her torso thrown back, her shift slipping from her shoulder, the ochre mantle rolled in broad folds behind her, raises both arms: her hands are already no longer hands, they bear tufts of laurel leaves.
The metamorphosis is not shown on one side only. At the foot of the canvas, the foot set on the ground is already thickening into a trunk and pushing out its first roots, while the other stays on tiptoe. The body is seized at both ends, arms and feet, and only the torso is still alive. This is Ovid to the letter: pes modo tam velox pigris radicibus haeret, “her feet, so swift a moment ago, cling fast in sluggish roots”.
Read from left to right, the canvas unfolds the whole story: Apollo seizing, Daphne changing, the whirling wind carrying off the mantle, then the water and the reeds. It does not close on a setting but on the river Peneus — the father to whom the prayer has just been addressed, and through whom deliverance comes. The four elements of the text are there, in order. That is why 150 cm of width were needed.
All the tension of the painting lies in this thwarted diagonal: he pressing upward and to the right, she slipping away towards the sky. The two faces cross without meeting — he looks at her, she looks elsewhere.
Details
The painter shows no bark and no trunk: the transformation can be read only in the fingers, from which spring laurel shoots painted a pale, almost grey green, picked out with a few touches of gold. The gesture is still that of a living hand — and that is what makes the detail unsettling.
Daphne, a red ribbon knotted in her dark hair, her mouth half open, does not look at her pursuer: her eyes go upward, towards the river, towards rescue. Apollo sees nothing but her. The painter set the two gazes only a few centimetres apart — and that is the whole subject.
At the base of the leg resting on the ground, the flesh loses its outline and turns into a streaked brown mass — the beginning of a trunk — from which spring a few grey-green shoots, the same as those on the hands. The other foot is still on tiptoe, in full flight. The painter has therefore caught the metamorphosis at both extremities at once: the arms becoming branches, the feet becoming roots. To the left, Apollo’s laced buskin.
To the right of Daphne, a vast cream and grey mass coils in concentric lobes and takes up almost half the canvas. It is born in the continuation of the ochre drapery at her hip: it is the mantle, lifted and rolled by the chase. Ovid says so expressly — the winds bared her body and the contrary breezes set her garments quivering. The painter treated this gust not as folds but as a single volume. It is this choice that dictates the landscape format.
The story ends on the right, on water: greenish horizontal planes, reeds drawn in black line by a very free hand, and, set against a rocky outcrop, a low building — a straight roof ridge, a dark opening. To its right, a pale form laid on in thick paint, which reads either as a white beast at the watering place or as a jet of water: the point is not settled. This is the river Peneus, the father to whom Daphne has just addressed her prayer.
Conservation
The canvas was entrusted to the studio of Ariane Blanche, in Nantes, and returned to the château on 26 July 2026. A paintings conservator since 1992, Maître Artisan, specialising in oil painting. The text that follows is her own commentary.
Condition report
The painting was kept at the château de Briord through changing weather and fluctuating humidity levels. The linen canvas that serves as its support is highly sensitive to damp, and these variations have weakened the whole.
The treatment
- Removal from the stretcher and protection The canvas is detached from its stretcher, then the whole paint layer is protected by applying a paper — the facing, or cartonnage.
- Relining Lining the original canvas: the adhesive used re-fixes the paint layer and bonds a new natural-fibre canvas to the old one. Removing the facing shows whether the operation has succeeded, and the canvas is then re-stretched on its stretcher.
- Surface cleaning Removal of all the atmospheric pollution deposited on the painted surface: smoke from fireplaces and from cigarettes.
- Varnish removal Dissolving the oxidised varnish with solvents, used pure or in mixture.
- Removal of overpaint Earlier retouchings are taken off “dry”, with a scalpel.
- Filling and levelling The losses are filled with a white putty which, once shaped, makes the damage disappear.
- Retouching The losses are coloured with pigments bound in a synthetic resin, entirely reversible and stable over time.
- Final satin varnish Applied over the whole work, it protects the painting and serves an aesthetic purpose. Three finishes were possible — matt, satin or gloss. Satin was chosen: it gives the paint back its depth without the glare of gloss, which would have spoilt the reading of a canvas of this width.
A conservator’s vocabulary
- Blanching
- A whitish veil that forms when damp penetrates the microcracks and porosities of the varnish. It deadens the colours without touching the paint itself.
- Facing
- Paper pasted temporarily over the whole painted surface to hold it in place during handling. It is removed at the end.
- Relining
- Bonding a new canvas to the back of the old one, which restores its tension and re-fixes the paint layer in the process.
- Surface cleaning
- Cleaning of the surface: soot, dust, smoke deposits. It does not reach the varnish.
- Varnish removal
- Dissolving the old varnish, yellowed and oxidised, with solvent.
- Overpaint
- Retouching added by a hand later than the painter’s. It is removed to recover the original.
- Loss
- A gap in the paint layer, where the paint has fallen away.
- Reversibility
- The fundamental principle of the craft: everything added to a work must be capable of being removed without altering it.
Before and after
The treatment in pictures
The canvas laid flat on the studio table. The whitish veil of blanching and the oxidised varnish deaden the colours and flatten the distances.
The cotton swab passes over the painted surface and lifts away the atmospheric pollution laid down by decades of fireplaces. The network of craquelure appears clearly.
Under the tip of the swab, a patch of blue-grey emerges, still vivid. The whole gap between the soiled work and the true work lies in that square centimetre.
Strips of paper are pasted one by one over the entire paint layer. This facing will hold it in place during the relining.
The canvas is detached from its stretcher and handled flat. The surface carries the accumulated traces of two centuries.
The paper lifts away — the newsprint used to apply it is still legible. The paint has stayed in place: the relining has held.
With the oxidised varnish dissolved and the old overpaint removed with a scalpel, every loss of matter shows pale. It is the most striking moment of the whole undertaking.
The losses are concentrated on the left and along the lower edge. Each will be filled with putty, levelled, then coloured with reversible pigments.
The work at Briord
The château holds a small group of old paintings, still present when Eric Peters acquired it in February 2022. Most date from the early nineteenth century. All are in poor condition and will be conserved one by one. This is heavy and costly work, set — like the buildings themselves — within a ten-year plan.
The entrance hall houses some very large formats. On that scale, Apollo and Daphne is a canvas of reasonable dimensions.