Apollo and Daphne is a baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 life-sized marble sculpture by Italian Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian artist who worked principally in Rome. He was the leading sculptor of his age and also a prominent architect...

 housed in the Galleria Borghese

Galleria Borghese

The Borghese Gallery is an art gallery in Rome, Italy, housed in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana. It is a building that was from the first integral with its gardens, nowadays considered quite separately by tourists as the Villa Borghese gardens...

 in Rome.

It depicts the climax of the story of Daphne

Daphne

Daphne was a female minor nature deity. Pursued by Apollo, she fled and was chased. Daphne begged the gods for help, who then transformed her into Laurel.-Overview:...

 and Phoebus in Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

's Metamorphoses. When Phoebus (Apollo), fated by Cupid

Cupid

In Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love. He is the son of the goddess Venus and the god Mars. His Greek counterpart is Eros...

's love-exiting arrow, sees the maiden daughter of Peneus

Peneus

In Greek mythology, Peneus was a Thessalian river god, one of the three thousand Rivers , a child of Oceanus and Tethys. The nymph Creusa bore him one son, Hypseus, who was King of the Lapiths, and three daughters, Menippe , Daphne, and Stilbe. He also had a son Atrax with Bura, and Andreus with...

 a river god, he is filled with wonder at her beauty and consumed by desire. But Daphne has been fated by Cupid's love-repelling arrow and denies the love of men.